Power Enriched
by Awdures
Summary: Sonic was told to flee. Knuckles was told to hide. Sonic was told to keep himself safe. Knuckles was told to keep something else safe. Turns out they're both terrible at following instructions. (Sequel for the 2020 movie which will become AU the moment they release an actual sequel. Spoilers obviously.)
1. Chapter 1

_**10 years ago**_

"I hope you're proud of yourselves," Tikal said as the warriors returned. "He's just a child."

"Yeah, and we lost him anyway," one of them muttered. "So you may as well give up the outrage now."

"You 'lost' him?"

"The owl used a ring," Pachacamac said, silencing the warrior's answer with a quietly raised hand. "He's gone."

"You chased a chaos-using child with no idea what's he's doing, off world, with no idea where he went?"

Tikal felt a shudder of horror run through her and couldn't tell if it was her own apprehension or actual reaction from her charge.

"Can you find him?"

Tikal closed her eyes.

"I don't know. The Master Emerald… Chaos… does not like what you have done."

Pachacamac shook his own head. "Power has no feelings, power is just power. We've humoured this fanciful idea of yours that the energy has some sort of living spirit of is own because it's apparently helped you focus when we've needed it but that's all it is. A fantasy. We don't need fantasies, we need power."

He turned back to the warriors. "You're dismissed now until I need you. Until we decide what to do next."

He turned back.

"We need it," he repeated. "I sent scouting parties out again, before we found the hedgehog and they found nothing."

He paused and Tikal reluctantly stifled a protest to listen. This news had not yet reached her.

"No other echidnas," Pachacamac went on. "As far as we know we are now the last. And we are a tiny clan and growing smaller. And everyone else knows it too. That power is all that keeps us safe. We thought were were the only ones who could use it. It's that's not true we need to know why."

He paused again, but before Tikal could agree with at least that bit, his voice hardened.

"Or we need to eliminate that risk. I'm tired of having this same conversation with you!"

Tikal turned away again angrily – even time she thought he understood. _Every time. _It came back to power.

"Tikal! Listen. If you had seen the… _life_ that hedgehog child had, the vitality. We have all of the chaos emeralds. We have the Master Emerald. Yet we don't have that. We fade. Eggs fail to hatch or are never laid at all. Winter sickness no longer takes only the most elderly and frail. In all the tribe we have just one living child of our own. The power that once made us strong now barely keeps us alive, and if you can't find the reason, _priestess_, then the warriors must try instead."

Tikal shook her head.

"And that's how you intend for us to survive? On kidnapping children and stealing the power that Chaos granted them instead of us?" Tikal straightened her back and quoted. "Chaos is power – you and your warriors always remember that part well enough and forget the rest. 'Enriched by the heart.' And if echidna hearts have grown so dark that we wish to survive on the basis of snatching other people's children then perhaps we don't deserve to."

Anger that was only partly her own surged through her.

"And perhaps Chaos already knows that. Perhaps that's why we're dying. Perhaps that's why the power goes to others."

Pachacamac scoffed. "And if that all nonsense about 'heart' is true then perhaps you should control your temper." He struck his spear on the ground firmly. "And if you cannot then you are no suitable guardian. The warriors will take the Emeralds to a new site immediately. Go back to your babysitting, daughter. It's time this superstition came to an end."

Tikal stared at him. He didn't even check to see if she complied before turning his back and walking away to issue his orders.

Tikal stood frozen for a moment, mind racing in panic both fanned by and feeding the disturbance and distress of Chaos, churning in the heart of the Master Emerald.

Then she shook it off and ran, half formed plans and desperation whirling together in her mind. Back, as her father had angrily ordered, to her 'babysitting'.

She burst into the shelter and the little echidna, sitting on the floor, looked round with a big smile at her early return.

"Tikal! Look what I can do!"

A faint iridescence shimmered in his spines and he waved his hands through the air, swirling green and gold sparks into a bubble of light which wavered in the air between his palms.

"Knuckles," she began as the bubble collapsed in on itself and the room seemed for a moment even darker than it had been before the additional light had appeared.

Knuckles looked at the empty space between his hands where it had been and then at Tikal, wide eyed and starting to be afraid by her own alarm.

"Something bad has happened," he said in a tone which wasn't entirely a question. The light had gone from his quills and he looked even smaller in its absence.

Tikal nodded, rapidly gathering up supplies and belonging, shoving things into backpacks for the both of them. Picking out rings from the box on the shelf. Only two left. That was okay. It would be enough. Once there. Once back.

"Yes," she said, turning back to Knuckles who was still watching her. "Something bad has happened. But we're going to be okay. We're going to go somewhere safe. Okay?"

"Okay." Knuckles stood up and held out his hand, trusting in spite of the atmosphere of anxiety which now surrounded them both.

Tikal took his hand and led him at a run towards the shrine.

"Are we going to see the big Emerald?" Knuckles asked, scurrying alongside and keeping up easily despite the breathless pace that Tikal could barely maintain. "That's good. I think it likes me."

Tikal glanced down. There was nothing in Knuckles' face to indicate he knew he'd said anything unusual, despite the fact he was the only other echidna she knew who didn't fear the Emeralds as much as they coveted them.

"Yes," she said. "We need to go with it, and the chaos emeralds to somewhere safe. Some people want to take them away. We have to keep them safe."

Knuckles scowled fiercely. "Right!"

He let go of her hand to bound up the steps to the shrine, two at a time, as lightly as a bird, only to spin back around, in time with her, at a yell from the ground behind them.

Knuckles had stopped halfway up, Tikal with one foot on the first step.

"This place isn't your concern any more, Tikal," Pachacamac said. "Step aside."

She shook her head and turned the rest of the way around to stand squarely facing them.

"No."

Pachacamac glanced up at Knuckles.

"I thought you didn't believe in dragging children away from where they belong?"

Tikal glanced over her shoulder. Knuckles was half crouched on the steps, his eyes wide and honestly frightened this time. The shimmer was back on his spines.

She turned back to Pachacamac and his warriors.

"This is exactly where he belongs."

Pachacamac passed the hand not holding his spear over his eyes and for a moment looked almost weary instead of angry. "More of your fantasies. _Please,_ Tikal. Step aside. I will not be responsible for your safety if you do not."

"You haven't been responsible for me since you started down this path!"

She planted her own staff in the ground as Pachacamac raised his spear, pointed it, and looked away.

The warriors surged forward and as she felt the first blow land, knocking her aside, Tikal reached for strength not her own, for Chaos and the emeralds. She found it already rising to meet her, all outraged fury, pouring down over her like water or wind or neither.

And then it had passed and stood before her instead. A spirit made, if not flesh, then at least solid, and it was _angry_. Leaping towards the warriors, it roared and the ground shook and bucked beneath their feet as though trying to shake off their very touch.

Atop the shrine the pillars crashed down, the alter split, and the steps cracked.

Tikal looked back as Knuckles dived clear of the falling debris but found nothing to land on. His head struck the opposite edge of the chasm of stone that had torn open in the stairway but somehow he'd secured a grip and pulled himself up.

"Knuckles!" Tikal shouted and he turned woozily in her direction, before an aftershock sent the stone beneath his feet whip-lashing like something alive, and he fell, tail over tip down the steps to lie motionless at the bottom.

She ran for him, jumping over bodies flung in her path by furious Chaos and scooped Knuckles up. There wasn't time to check if he'd survived because at this rate, no one would.

"No!" she shouted, not sure if she was addressing the spirit or the Emerald or the energy itself. "This isn't the right way!"

_It's their way._ Somewhere from inside or outside her the answer came. _It's what they would have used this power for against others._

She couldn't deny it.

"I can't let you kill them!"

No answer came. It didn't need to because the answer was obvious. She had no good way to stop it.

Overhead from atop the shrine a flash of light painted the scene in lurid colours for an instant and was gone. In her arms Knuckles whimpered and stirred, struggling to be put down. She set him back on his feet where he staggered but stayed upright.

"The bad things are happening. Where did they go?"

Tikal brushed his confused words away.

"It's okay. We're going to stop it."

He shook his head. "No it's not okay. It's not. They're gone and-"

Tikal, on instinct, glanced back up at the shrine.

_Gone_. Knuckles was right, the chaos emeralds were gone and even as she watched another furious tremor shook the ground and the Master Emerald itself tipped off its pedestal and came crashing down the steps, tumbling as Knuckles had fallen, end over end.

Its normally tranquil hue roiled within it as it came to rest a handspan from where they'd flung themselves clear. Violent shadows lashed across the ground in its light as the echidnas fought, and lost to Chaos' fury.

Tikal looked around, desperate for some way in to intervene but finding nothing. Her gaze settled back on Knuckles, barely on his feet, defenceless, for all his potential.

If she couldn't stop this, if she could save no one else, perhaps there was this one last thing worth doing.

She reached for the rings in her belt pouch and beckoned to Knuckles.

"Come on," she said. "It's like I said. We need to take the big Emerald somewhere safe."

Knuckles looked close to terrified tears but nodded and came to her side. She threw the ring and the portal opened, somewhere habitable but as safe and isolated and empty as she could possibly remember.

She reached for the Master Emerald and heaved. It was really too big for one echidna to move alone but Knuckles set his own smaller weight against it too and blue-green light washed over them. Knuckles made a startled, quiet sound and then they were through the ring.

It snapped out behind them and a musty, twilight silence replaced the screaming uproar of moments before. The Emerald-light dimmed though for the moment the gleam lingered on Knuckles' quills, reflected in his wide eyes before blinking out.

Knuckles sat down with a bump on the spongy ground, looking dazed by the sudden stillness and plucked absently at the one intact strap of his back pack. Tikal slipped hers off and put it down beside him.

"Knuckles?"

He turned an almost empty gaze up at her. Fear and hurt and confusion all tumbled together into numb, uncomprehending shock.

It was almost impossible in the face of it to do what she needed but she spoke anyway.

"I need to go back. I need to stop what's happening."

Knuckles shook his head, still silent but urgent and so desperate that she nearly gave in.

Instead she kept talking.

"I need you to help me. I need you to stay here and hide the big Emerald. It needs to be kept safe, remember?"

She almost weakened again at the struggle on his face but in the end he nodded.

"Good. Be brave. I'll send someone for you when it's safe again."

"Send?" Knuckles' voice shook. "But, you..."

"I'm sorry. There's something I have to do and… it means I won't be able to come back."

He didn't reach for her or try to stop her and that made it almost harder to leave than it would have been otherwise.

"Can you really stop the bad thing?"

She nodded. "Yes. I think I know how."

"Okay." The fierce look was back on Knuckles' face even with tears running down his muzzle. "Then I can keep the Master Emerald safe." His voice hitched. "For a while."

"Yes," Tikal said. "For a while. Someone will come back for you. I promise."

She took the last ring from her belt and turned to throw it. As the portal blossomed in front of her she looked over her shoulder before stepping through. Knuckles was back on his feet, arms crossed tightly in front of him and his eyes bright with both tears and the same shimmering light that danced on his spines.

She kept her eyes on that tiny, defiant shape as the ring-portal swallowed her up.


	2. Chapter 2

_**5 years ago**_

Longclaw picked her way through the abandoned structure cautiously, having already fallen twice. The area was still flooded in places and even in the absence of standing water was still wet, every stone surface and cobble coated with thick slimy algae. Vines twisted among the ruins accelerating their collapse and ferns poked up through gaps. Here and there even saplings had taken root.

Water, or decay, or scavengers had swept the place clear of the bodily remains she'd half expected to find even after this span of time but there was equally little trace of the resident she was assured by spooked locals had taken up here more recently.

There was someone here though. Someone who she could distantly sense. Someone who had a connection in some way to the energies that had once flowed here and which she'd thought had passed out of the world with Sonic's escape and the demise of the echidnas at the hands of whatever they'd unleashed in the wake of losing him.

She sighed and paused to rest. She hoped 'lost' wasn't what Sonic was. Hoped he'd found somewhere safe. Had not had to resort to one of the empty worlds on her list, had found a home and friends. Had learned patience, or at least caution.

She was too old now to chase after him with the one ring she'd retained. The chance too slim, the risk of needing it for some worse danger too great, the odds of guessing correctly where he'd gone too small.

She could only hope.

From the edge of the encroaching jungle a flicker of movement drew her attention from her thought.

There _was_ someone here. Someone else with the ability to tap into that almost-gone power.

"I saw that," she called. It was only a slight exaggeration. "Why don't you come out and chat? I don't mean any harm."

There was a pause and then the shape among the trees resolved itself into a fox-cub and stepped out into the open.

"Hi."

"Hi," she smiled back, the mixture of wariness and challenge and eagerness reminding her unavoidably of the same youngster she'd just been musing about but who'd be no longer this young. "What's your name? I'm Longclaw."

He eyed her talons and she waggled them with a shrug.

The fox giggled.

"I'm Miles. People say Tails." His face drew into an almost comical glare. "I think they think that's funny but they can't do this!"

Longclaw's beak dropped open in surprise as the little fox leapt into the air and shot up vertically to hover above her for a moment before landing and swishing both tails – he did indeed have two – behind him. "So Tails is fine."

Longclaw smiled again. "Names are people's own. Tails then. Are you out here by yourself?"

Again the cub's face scrunched up in an expression that was more mule than fox.

"Yeah. So? I'm big enough. I can look after myself. I'm exploring."

He pulled a contraption out of the messenger bag slung across his body.

"See. There's something weird out here."

Longclaw nodded. "So I understand."

Tails grinned at her agreement.

"Wanna see a cool thing?"

"Sure."

Tails beamed and led the way into one of the least damaged buildings. What had been windows were obscured now with foliage but he pulled out a torch and led the way confidently before coming to a stop and shining it at the wall, playing it over the painted plaster.

A mural filled it from top to bottom. It was water damaged and the algae had been at work here too but the picture was still visible.

"I cleaned it off a bit," Tails said. "Is that an owl?"

"No," said Longclaw. "I think it's a machine." There _was_ something beak-like about the head of the thing, but it was all sharp angles and straight lines, complex patterns just visible in the flaking, painted plaster. "It's a hedgehog here though." She pointed at the opposite side of the image. Opposite the machine and facing it with a shining gem between them.

"A glowing one," Tails said. "A glowing, flying, blue hedgehog. Is it a story?"

"I don't know," Longclaw said. "But I've seen it before. I think it's… a warning"

Tails tipped his head on one side. "About blue hedgehogs? There aren't any blue hedgehogs."

Longclaw smiled.

"I don't think it's a warning about blue hedgehogs. But I did know one once."

Tails looked sceptical and Longclaw laughed.

"Where are you living, Tails? How did you find this place?"

Tails shrugged. "Here and there. Wherever, really. And I found it with this." He held with the contraption he'd pulled from his bag. "It sort of glows too. I wanted to know why. It's odd here. Tingly."

Longclaw gave him a considering look. 'Tingly' was as good a word as any for the sense of fading power here but it was fascinating to discover the fox could sense it even without his instrument.

"Are you hungry?" she asked finally. "I was just about to head for home and dinner."

Tails shrugged diffidently. "I'm fine."

"I'm sure you are," Longclaw said, careful not to smile this time at the cub's wary pride. "The Invitation stands anyway. Dinner and a story about a blue hedgehog I used to know."

The fox watched her a moment longer, but curiosity won.

"Okay."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Now**_

Knuckles stirred, groggy and stiff and slow and sick. His limbs refused to quite obey him, when he tried to roll back to his side, to get to his feet. He could barely move and his head thumped and his vision swam and he had no idea why except a fuzzy notion that there had been someone else there.

Which was ridiculous. There had been nobody else here for longer than he wanted to count.

Except there _was _something swaying above him that could almost be a face if everything wasn't so blurry.

Except that there had been a shout. A _yell_ where he's heard nothing but his own voice, and the wind and the rain since he came here.

His throat was dry and his eyes sticky, how long had be been out? _Why_ had he been out?

He coughed and regretted it at once because he still felt sick and it made him nearly retch.

"Is…?" he croaked. "Who…?"

The possibly-a-face tipped sideways. Curiosity? A real person and some not some dizzy, feverish hallucination?

It spoke but Knuckles' concentration was on staying awake, not on making sense of the words.

If it was real then this was important. Knuckles swallowed hard, squeezed his eyes shut then opened them again, fighting to pay attention, to work this out.

"Did… Did… send you… look for me?"

He knew he hadn't got all the words out. Was he making sense? It was important. It was important and he wasn't doing it well enough, he was missing his chance. Frustration made the words spill too fast for his groggy mind to put into order first. He could hardly speak and in any case barely had done for so long he'd almost forgotten how he sounded to himself, aloud. But it was important.

"Is.. can I… safe to go home?"

His own words had been mumbled, but must have been understood because the answer, when it came after a moment's pause, was perfectly clear.

"Do you have a_way_ home?"

The tone was light and curious. Cheerful, as far as he could remember what cheerful had sounded like. He was sorry to not be able to answer it as happily.

"Sort of," he murmured before the relief of there being another real person right here was too much for his fragile hold on consciousness.

When he woke again it was to the sound of someone calling to him, instructing him to do so.

Memory of the previous confused conversation came back all in a rush and he surged to his feet, looking around. There was a flurry of movement, of retreat, and Knuckles stumbled as he followed it automatically. Belatedly, he realised that he was trailing tattered ropes at wrist and ankles. His foot struck something in the ground and he stared down at a heavy metal peg driven deep into the soft earth. A broken end of rope trailed loosely on the ground there too.

He stared back up at the person who had backed away so rapidly. And had to crane his neck to do so because the creature was ridiculously tall.

"Did… you tie me up?" His heart sank, this was no search party come looking for their lost echidna.

"Well, apparently not!" the creature said and its tone was still strangely cheerful.

Knuckles found himself at a lost, trying to put the events in order.

"Let me go right ahead and answer that next question – yes I also shot you." The creature raised a device which Knuckles realised he probably wouldn't even have recognised as a weapon without the volunteered information.

"But that's not the important question. The important question you should be asking yourself is, given that I was ruthlessly attacked and flung here with these _scraps _the largest part left of my ship, attacked by someone who looked remarkably like someone from _your_ planet, why exactly I didn't simply kill you outright."

Knuckles blinked, struggling to even keep up with the pace of the words, much less the sense of them.

"An echidna attacked you?"

If that was so, there had to be a reason. Except… that they'd attacked Tikal as well. Had left him here. Or not, maybe they'd merely failed to find him to attack him too. He still had no way of knowing which.

The creature tipped his head to the side and stuck his face forwards, peering at Knuckles.

"Is that what you'd say you are?"

Knuckles frowned, puzzled. "Yes. Of course."

"Hmm. And this isn't home?"

Had he said that? It was true though. He shrugged.

"This isn't anybody's home."

"Oh I'm sure the mushrooms would disagree. So why haven't _you_ gone home?"

"I don't have any rings. I came here with someone but they had to go back and I…" Abruptly Knuckles cut himself off.

_Hide it. _Tikal's words echoed in his mind. _Keep it safe._

He looked away, shrugged again. "I had to stay."

Again the curious look. "And what does 'sort of' mean?"

"What?"

"You said, you 'sort of' had a way home."

Knuckles shook his head at once this time. "No. I don't."

_Hidden. Safe._ No part of that included conversations with aliens about what he could and couldn't maybe do by using it. However imperfectly.

This particular alien did not look convinced and Knuckles cast about for a distraction.

"Who attacked you? Where?"

"Earth. You know it?"

Knuckles shrugged. "From maps. There are no echidnas there."

He hesitated, suddenly unsure if he could be sure of that. There hadn't been. He was hardly up to date. And the chaos spirit had been at least sort of echidna shaped from what he recalled of that confused and terrifying day.

"Are you from there? Did they look like me? The person who attacked you?"

The alien didn't seem put off by the doubled question.

"I'm human, yes. The creature was not. There was indeed a superficial anatomical resemblance to yourself, height, general body-plan and so forth though some of the eidonomy varied – colouration, spine arrangement and length-"

Knuckles cut him off.

"What did he _look_ like?"

The human's expression flashed into fury for a split second at the interruption and then his face abruptly transformed into a broad, rather extreme, grin.

"He was _blue"_ he said with exaggerated slowness. "And spikier."

Knuckles blinked.

"A blue _hedgehog_? Are you sure"

A huge careless shrug came in answer. "Not remotely. But if you call yourself an echidna he could have been calling himself a hedgehog. It's not what would be recognised as either species on Earth.

Knuckles hesitated, mind racing. The instructions to keep his head down, keep hidden, keep what he was guarding a secret, warred against the urge to know more. There had been a blue hedgehog. A child.

Tikal had said a child 'like you'.' and he hadn't known what she'd meant at the time. A hedgehog wasn't like an echidna. And after a while she wouldn't talk to him about it any more. With hindsight, Knuckles had realised she'd been trying to avoid upsetting him. That something bad had hung over the hedgehog child. Some danger either to him, or from him.

"Did he… Was there something..."

But there was no risk free way to ask what he really wanted to know and Knuckles let it drop.

"Why did he attack you?"

Unexpectedly, given the topic, the alien smiled. "He wanted something I had."

Knuckles was left to conclude from the smile that he'd retained possession of whatever it was.

If so it was pretty much all he'd managed. The alien – human? - looked utterly ragged. But he'd survived here.

"How long ago?"

"One hundred and forty four days." The answer was whip-crack quick.

Knuckles tried to remember what one hundred and forty four days here had felt like and couldn't. He was certain he wouldn't have been able to give the number for a start. Less than half a year but still so long. Had he already realised by then, no one was coming back for him? Surely he must have suspected, but it seemed too short a time as well. An age and no time at all compared to the time since. Long enough to be furious with everyone back home for not coming, short enough to miss them desperately and he couldn't remember which had held sway.

Perhaps the human's erratic, changeable behaviour was not unexpected at all. But he was still looking for a way back. He wasn't waiting for rescue or permission.

On impulse, Knuckles blurted out, "What's your name?"

"Robotnik." The human smiled. "Doctor."


	4. Chapter 4

**Earth:**

Sonic laid his ears flat on his head so they wouldn't give the game away immediately and peeked up out of the open car window, and through the diner window.

"Okay?" he asked.

Tom was already out of the car.

"Yeah. Only locals."

With a broad grin Sonic departed the car at speed via the window and charged ahead into the diner, setting the bell at the door jangling as though a twister had just blown through.

By the time Mary, behind the counter had looked round at the noise, Sonic was already in a seat.

Tom followed and Mary smiled in recognition and turned without surprise to where Sonic was sitting, swinging his legs and both elbows and very nearly chin on the table.

"The usual for you both?"

"Please!" Sonic grinned and Tom nodded.

Mary shook her head. "Still don't know how you can eat that sort of thing for breakfast, Sonic."

"Because they're the best chillidogs in all of Green Hills!" Sonic beamed at her. He would never have guessed in a million years how good it would feel to have his name known, his favourite breakfast known, to be _part_ of, instead of observing this town.

Mary looked at Tom and gave a stage whisper. "He knows there's only two diners _in_ town, right?"

Tom laughed. "If the 'dogs are on a par with the pancakes he's probably right even so."

Mary smiled and headed into the kitchen.

The bell at the door tinkled again, more sedately this time but Sonic was already gone. From behind the counter he heard a familiar voice and vaulted back over it.

"Super Observant Carl!" he greeted with enthusiasm as the man ordered takeaway coffee and proceeded to outline his plans for the day, which chiefly involved proving that the cell phone mast going up in the next valley over was part of a conspiracy which Sonic only heard the first half of before Tom interrupted.

"No breaking and entering, Carl. I mean it."

Tom got no promise back but shook his head and didn't follow as Carl left.

"Oh well, I guess I'll hear about it if there's a problem."

Their breakfasts arrived and Sonic had finished his and was looked for the next entertainment before Tom had finished syruping his pancakes. He'd just started a game of 'the floor is lava' (which, when played in the diner, he'd previous been firmly informed by Mary meant "the floor and _all of the eating surfaces_ are lava") when the bell rang again.

He launched himself from a one-footed balance on the back of a sofa, across the diner and over the counter. He landed in a crouch to the sound of a gasp. No local this time.

"Did you see that!" It was a girl's voice, no older the six or seven.

"Sure did, honey." An amused but surprisingly _unsurprised_ adult voice replied. "Guess the Blue Devil is real after all. Maybe we'd better stick around and see what we can see. You go and sit down with Mommy and I'll get us some breakfast."

Mary stepped out of the kitchen and Sonic ducked around her legs, getting further under the counter.

From overhead he heard a lowered voice say, "Nice effects, convinced the little one, right off!"

Mary's voice was amused. "Well Green Hills is a small town, we get a bit of celebrity we've gotta make the most of it, right?"

"Sure do," the man said and Mary took his order and sent him back to his table before she glanced down. Sonic grinned up at her, shrugged and followed her to the kitchen and out the back door. Tom would know he needed to split. They'd catch up later.


	5. Chapter 5

Knuckles wasn't sure what to make of the human. He was unpredictable but it was hard to know if that was even unusual. Knuckles had run a mental tally of the adults he'd known and hadn't be able to come up with a single one who hadn't alarmed or confused him at some point. The warriors who were meant to keep them safe had turned on them. Gentle Tikal who taught him and played with him and told him stories, had unleashed a monster, but then had saved him from it, but then had left him here. The people she'd told him would come for him had not.

People were unpredictable and unreliable and the fact that he appeared to have forgotten it frustrated him.

In any case, since he and Doctor Robotnik were apparently the only people on this planet, it only made sense to share information. The doctor had a different method to Knuckles of working out what was edible and they'd both increased their food variety as a result.

The doctor claimed to be confident of finding or building a way off the planet and given his lack of resources the very idea was mind-boggling.

And there was the hedgehog. The doctor had expressed his own doubts about how that shared contact could be a coincidence.

"You said you were sent here? Why _here_?"

Knuckles fed dried peat to the fire and shifted himself closer trying to drive out the damp of the drizzly day which had endured even beneath the canopy of mushroom caps.

"It was supposed to be a safe place."

"Safe from what?"

Knuckles shrugged, wearily. "I don't know. Maybe everyone."

"Blue hedgehogs?"

"Maybe."

Knuckles thought about it. The planet was empty of people but had proved less than entirely _safe_ after all. It was a secret place not a safe one, but he'd explored a long way before discovering the dangers. Perhaps they weren't well known. Maybe the people were the point.

"There was no one living here," he said aloud.

The doctor tightened a screw on some device with a makeshift tool made from a broken part of something else, and turned it over in the firelight examining it.

"And stranding me on an empty world was clearly what the hedgehog had in mind." He opened another panel on the device. "But the odds against finding the only other person on an otherwise unpopulated world are – " His hands stilled for a moment. "Well – they're calculable for the likes of me but effectively dismissible as coincidence. How far out from here have you explored?"

"Maybe 3 days walk. Most directions. I'd say I know it _well_ a day or so out in any direction."

The doctor drummed his fingers in a frantic gallop against the device. "Missing data there of course in terms of speed of movement. Is that a hundred mile radius or a thousand? Was finding you after only 144 days a wild coincidence or almost inevitable? Had we had hundreds of near misses just a few mushroom stalks out of eyeshot?"

Knuckles had lost the thread of the conversation but the gist appeared to be how unlikely the encounter was. He wasn't particularly interested in that aspect.

He poked the fire, raked down the embers to a fine glow, positioned his blackened cook-stone over it and laid out some slices of mushroom directly on it. This stone had lasted a good long time. He'd had accidents with earlier attempts before he'd leaned the hard way how to choose stones that wouldn't shatter in the heat and he had the scars to show for it.

He strung a length or twine above the whole thing it to dry more mushroom for tomorrow.

"Aren't you tired of mushrooms, yet?"

Knuckles glanced at the human, startled.

"Yes. Of course. But it's what there is."

"Aren't you tired of being stuck here?"

Knuckles stared at him. The answer was as equally obvious.

The doctor stood up and Knuckles jumped up as well by reflex at being loomed over.

"What did 'sort of' mean?"

Knuckles looked away.

"What are you hiding that's keeping us both from going home?"

Knuckles looked back sharply. "What are _you_ hiding that the hedgehog tried to take from you?"

The doctor chuckled and sat back down.

"Touché, my furry little friend." He dragged his carry-sack of supplies closer to the fire and reached into the depths of it. "Well… I'm sure you can be trusted."

He withdrew a broken glass tube. It flickered with blue light and at first Knuckles assumed it must be part of some machine. Except that something about it gave him an unnerving sense of familiarity and strangeness. He stared without understanding for long, puzzled seconds before what he was looking at clicked into place. A hedgehog quill glittered there. Before he'd realised what he was doing Knuckles had reached for it because it wasn't only light it was dancing with and with it suddenly within arms length he could _feel_ the energy dancing along it.

The doctor raised it out of immediate reach without taking his eyes off Knuckles whose attention was caught by another flickering light at the edge of his vision. He turned his head before realising it was only a shimmer of reaction along his own quills falling around his face. He shook it off, recovering his composure, but the damage was done and the look on the human's face had turned speculative. Assessing. Calculating.

"That's not yours," Knuckles said. "That came from the hedgehog."

"Yes," the doctor admitted readily. "And he's not the only one of his kind, it seems."

Knuckles hesitated.

_A child like you_, Tikal had said. This was what she'd meant then. The hedgehog had been – was – wound about with chaos energy. Knuckles' mind raced, fighting to put into context everything he remembered. That's what Tikal had stopped short of telling him. That's why the warriors had been looking for the hedgehog. But Tikal hadn't wanted them to? Is that why they'd attacked her? They hadn't returned with the hedgehog – had he defeated them? Or fled? What did the hedgehog want now? How much did he know? How much control did he have? What did he intend to do with it?

Knuckles had more way more new questions than he had answers.

"You look surprised..." the doctor drawled, his tone an invitation to spill those questions into the air on the off chance, the vague hope, that someone else may have more luck guessing the answers.

Knuckles could hear how startled and quiet his own voice sounded.

"I thought I was the only one. Tikal and me, but she's dead, I think. I think she must be. No one told me there was anyone else."

"And you never suspected?"

Knuckles shook his head numbly then hesitated. "They knew though. There – was a picture. In the things Tikal left with me."

She'd never showed it to him before and then she was gone and there'd been no one to explain it.

"There was a blue hedgehog." He stared up at the human. "And a machine. Fighting." He looked at the pack of equipment on the ground. "There are no machines like that on my world."

The doctor gave him a disbelieving look.

"Prophecy? That's…" He paused thoughtfully. "Improbable. Show me this picture."

Knuckles shook his head. "I don't have the books anymore."

He'd regretted the loss, but preserving them had been the least of his worries in the first few years of bare survival. Some had been lost to the pervasive damp, others he'd be forced to sacrifice to get himself the protection of fire.

At least it meant keeping the remaining secret shown in that picture easier for the moment. He'd no idea how much he'd already told that Tikal would have intended him not to, but the Master Emerald was safe, unmentioned, unremarked, unseen. Hidden. He had not broken that promise.

"So what does 'sort of' mean?" The question was snapped out, Knuckles had almost forgotten it had been asked already.

"We arrived at this little romp down memory lane because we were _sharing_ secrets, correct? So what did you mean when you claimed you 'sort of' had a way home?"

Knuckles stared at him, considering. It wasn't _the_ secret, but it was still, maybe, dangerous. Whether or not it was more dangerous than having someone here who was looking for it though? Someone who already had guessed there _was_ a secret? Knuckles didn't know. Maybe it was safer, if it could be done, to send him home.

And maybe that was all he wanted. Knuckles could understand the pull of home and if this human had been sent here, against his will by the blue hedgehog, he would quite naturally want to return.

"Hmmm?" the human smiled.

Knuckles swallowed down the frustration of indecision and pointed at the quill, still clutched in the doctor's hand.

"That's why we found each other," he said.

The human interrupted instantly.

"I can assure you I was not wandering around following the directions of a glowing lump of keratin."

Knuckles shook his head, ignoring the terminology. "Neither was I. Not on purpose. But chaos calls to chaos. You can see that."

He stroked his hand through the air, tracing the shape of the quill in mid-air and watching the human's eyes fasten on the thing itself as the cracking energy increased in response.

"You came here by a ring, yes?"

"As I said."

"The energy is… similar. Chaos energy would have-" he made a face. He didn't really have the right words for this and none of the infant's explanations he'd been taught, nor the complex expansion in the books he'd lost, nor his muddled half successes with applying both had equipped him for explaining it to someone else.

"It would have… pulled… at it. You have to… steer?"

He wasn't sure he was making sense and it wasn't the main point, he was getting sidetracked.

"It doesn't matter. It landed you near me, _because_ it was near me. What matters is that when there's not that-"

"Interference."

Knuckles shrugged. "If that's the word. But when there isn't, the rings work fine. They're made to control chaos. Even for people who can't. To do just one thing. Transport."

The human's attention was laser sharp on him now, regardless of whether the explanation was muddled.

"Chaos," he said, thoughtfully. "You're not using that word to mean entropy. You're using it to mean this." He rattled the quill in the glass tube. "This power. That the hedgehog has. That you have."

Knuckles nodded.

"So is this rambling, science-less, explanation eventually going to arrive at the fact that you can use this power to teleport about the place _without_ these rings?"

"No. It's not as simple as that. It's not about power. It's about control."

To his surprise, Knuckles realised he was actually enjoying explaining, getting questions and responses, sharing what he knew. Even if he was working it out as he went.

"Rings occur naturally in certain places, when the energy," he stumbled for a word again for moment. "Pools? But they don't go anywhere. They go nowhere. Somewhere that's not… Somewhere between." He let that wobbly description stand. "It's dangerous. You can get stuck. But there are points of focus. Ways to increase control."

"And do you _have_ these?"

"No. Not enough. Some."

"And would these be anything to do with the ever-so-shiny rocks you're toting around with you?"

Knuckles' stomach turned over. "You went through my pack when I was unconscious?"

The doctor shrugged off the question. "Don't excite yourself. I was looking for weapons not valuables. You'll notice you still have them."

Knuckles swung his pack within reach and laid out six chaos emeralds in front of him, touching them lightly with sense as well as his finger tips and finding them undisturbed.

He looked back warily.

"Yes," he said. "But I don't have them all. I can't hold the _where. _It – tips. It's unbalanced. Even-" He cut himself off. It was too easy to talk too much! He changed track. "I need the last one, but it's been getting more dangerous. I can find the rings when they form. I can go through, but... There's something else there. Something bad."

And yet he'd gone back five times after the first. Because in spite of the malevolence there was something else there too. Something that drew him, something familiar and inviting and welcoming. As though the bad thing was an intrusion not the nature of the place itself.

He didn't attempt to explain any of this. Much less that first occasion. How he'd hesitated over that. Years he'd watched the rings come and go, gazed into the swirling void that twisted there instead of the landscape he longed to see.

Wondering if _nowhere_ could really be any worse than an empty _somewhere_, whether it was worth the gamble. How cold and wet and tired and hungry he'd been and how inviting it had looked on the day he'd given in to the temptation. How _welcomed_ he'd felt in the moments before the bad thing was on his heels. Unseen and yet terrifyingly present and he'd fled before it, confused and frightened and remorseful. And then there'd been the chaos emerald – a point of pale blue calm in the churning world and he'd reached for it wishing for home and instead finding himself curled up and clutching it in the chilly light of the Master Emerald.

But if the chaos emeralds could take him from _there_ to here, then they ought to be able to take him from here to home. Here to anywhere. Except he lacked the control it needed, and without all chaos emeralds together in proper balance even the Master Emerald couldn't fully compensate – or at least not under Knuckles' own half-trained direction.

Robotnik tapped the glass-encased quill against the nearest emerald thoughtfully, stirring a flicker of response in the depths of the gem. Knuckles frowned and gathered them back up. Robotnik ignored this.

"And you got these, from inside the rings that 'didn't go anywhere?" His face curled with distaste as though the vagueness of the explanation had been a personal insult. "And you're afraid to go back for the last one?"

Knuckles bristled at the implication but the only explanation he could offer would be that it had simply _felt_ more dangerous every time. It would be a lie to deny it. He _was_ afraid. A childish terror of the bad thing. Hunting for the emeralds in that other place had felt like hunting for something in a nightmare. And it had felt worse each time. As though whatever malevolence was there was angered by his removing them.

He stared back at the doctor. There was a strange smile on his face but Knuckles couldn't tell if it was sympathy or mockery.

"It's dangerous..."

The doctor cocked his head sideways. "Maybe less dangerous with two?"

Knuckles dropped his gaze to the bag of emeralds in his lap. Could that be right, was this a chance to get that last one and go home? He allowed himself the thought for a moment. Maybe they didn't know he was alive, didn't know where Tikal had sent him, maybe they'd been searching without success all this time. Maybe the danger was past and the sickness cured and the world at peace again. Maybe Tikal was mourned and he was missed and all he needed to do was find the courage to find his way back.

Or maybe he was telling himself stupid fanciful stories. Tikal had said hide.

He was tired of hiding.

The doctor was still waiting for an answer. Knuckles looked up.

"Maybe."


	6. Chapter 6

The following morning Knuckles found himself leading the way through the higher reaches of the mushroom canopy. It was slow going. Knuckles knew where he wanted to get to but had needed to wildly alter the route to account for the human's almost total inability to make even the most straightforward of jumps and it was slow going.

Perhaps it was a good thing – the re-planning on the fly left him little time to linger on whether this was the right choice or not. A sleepless night had already failed to resolve that question in his mind.

Fussing about it now could only lead to distraction and distraction was dangerous. Even as this thought crossed Knuckles' mind, he mis-stepped and proved himself right. Plunging knee deep into a rotting mushroom cap released a choking cloud of spores. Eyes and nose instantly streamed with water, blinding and smothering him. He spent long moments trying not to cough and draw more spores into his aching lungs, while deciding whether to wait for the spores to settle or risk releasing more by trying to pull himself back up and get out of them.

Before he'd managed to find his breath again to to decide, he was yanked clear. He wiped his watering eyes and for a split second reeled away, horrified at the apparition that had grabbed him. Belated he released that it was only the doctor in a complicated mask.

"Thanks." Knuckles coughed and brushed the remaining spores off himself. He looked up. The mask had clearly not been improvised on the moment. It was something deliberately built for navigating the spore-releasing areas.

Knuckles waved at it. "Useful," he managed between breaths.

"I thought so," the doctor agreed. "Some of those spores have more... interesting… effects than a bit of a cough.

Knuckles nodded but his attention was was quickly drawn from the terrain to the air where the commotion had attracted attention. Flying _things_ circled overhead, that Knuckles had never managed to see closely enough to identify as either bird or bat or something else entirely. There was something insect-like in their flicker-fast changes of direction. They were attracted to the spores, or insects that ate the spores perhaps but it wasn't them he was concerned about. It was what was drawn in turn by their presence.

A shadow of wings passed over them and Knuckles dragged the taller human down onto his knees.

"Be still," he warned

The doctor frowned and looked about to protest but silenced himself as once as the creature dived. This was definitely _not_ a bird. Furred not feathered, it no had beak but a wicked set of teeth and talons as Knuckles already knew to his cost.

It scooped up half the flock of the smaller flyers in one gulp, but Knuckles knew it was willing to take larger ground-bound prey if it spotted them.

He motioned to the doctor in the moments the creature spent regaining height and speed for another pass and pointed down at the ground. The doctor leaned over and baulked instantly at the drop. Knuckles frowned, thwarted again by the human's fragility.

With a clap of wings, the creature had changed direction and was coming back at them. Knuckles hesitated, tempted to go over the edge himself anyway but ashamed of the impulse in the next second.

He leapt to meet the danger instead. Swung a roundhouse blow at the point of the fearsome jaw which snapped the thing's head sideways. The short, forked tail lashed sideways as it flailed, slamming into the doctor and sending him sending tumbling towards the edge of the mushroom cap and that drop.

The creature snapped in passing at Knuckles who barely got his legs out of the way in time, at the cost of landing flat on his back instead of on his feet.

The doctor scrambled past him on hands and knees towards the spilled contents of his pack. Scrabbling among the objects he pulled out and aimed something at the creature. Knuckles rolled back to his feet awaiting the next attack.

The creature flapped towards them, pale-skinned hairless wings beating the air, teeth and talons spread.

Knuckles crouched, picking his moment.

Which never arrived. There was an almost inaudible noise from whatever the doctor had picked up and the creature ploughed straight past them, rolling slowly and blindly off course to plough through the mushrooms and into the ground without ever even attempting to pull up.

Knuckles straightened, staring, and wary of so easy an end, but the creature was motionless.

He looked back at the doctor, eyes on the weapon in his hand.

"Are we done here?" the doctor asked.

Knuckles blinked and looked around for a safe route onwards, his mind racing. This human had rebuilt a weapon like that from almost nothing since he'd been stranded here. What had he had available to him before on his own world? And the hedgehog had still beaten him. Just how powerful a chaos user could the hedgehog possibly be?

The warriors sent after him had come back without him. He thought he'd correctly guessed that much from Tikal's reactions. Had the hedgehog defeated them? All of them? When still just a child? And if so why had he left. What would happen if he returned?

Knuckles passed the rest of the roundabout journey lost in fretful thought but reached no new conclusions by the time he reached the place he was looking for. There was no ring here but the sense of slowly gathering energy was unmistakeable.

"Here," he said.

The doctor looked around. "I see no ring."

"Not yet." Knuckles settled himself to wait. "There will be."

"And how do you _know_ that?"

It seemed more like curiosity than disbelief but Knuckles couldn't answer it. Not in words that that were any clearer than those he'd tried to explain the rings with.

The doctor gave up asking for details, instead fidgeting with another of his devices while they waited. Knuckles watched, trying to summon to memory a clearer image of the machine that had been fighting the hedgehog in the picture.

After a while he spoke up.

"You had technology like this to fight the hedgehog? On Earth?"

The doctor's hands only paused for a moment as his face twisted into a scowl.

"Like these? These are _contraptions, _contrived, bodged, cludged, _scrap_, cobbled together. On Earth I had the best technology the planet had ever seen."

He hesitated then laughed a bark of near hysteria. "Of course that's probably true here too."

Knuckles wanted to ask how he'd come to lose anyway but that unnervingly rapid change of mood deterred him and before he'd steeled himself to say it, something else had caught his attention. He stood up.

"It's starting."

The energy surged and roiled before rising to a peak and a centre and pinpoint. The ring burst into view before them, gleaming in the low light of the murky sky.

In the centre spun a dizzying twist of colours hiding whatever distorted landscape lay within – unknowable until you stepped through.

Abruptly Knuckles realised that, as much as the human had made the route here difficult he'd be even more at a disadvantage in the unpredictable terrain of the unmade ring. It was too late to reconsider, or suggest he go alone though – the human had already gathered his belongings and stepped forward, in apparent unconcern. Knuckles took a deep breath and went after him.

The usual moment of sickening disorientation left his head and stomach protesting before he fought through it to take in the surroundings – and the dangers – as quickly as possible.

A featureless plain spread out before them, checkered in colours that were too bright, too saturated, that made the eye doubt the reality of what it saw. The horizon was too close, too curved, the sky too electric blue, flickering with lights from no visible source and churning with shapes that weren't clouds and that tumbled and changed to quickly to make sense of.

There was no cover here from the bad thing and more than one of Knuckles' six previous forays had taught him what that foreshortened horizon meant. How small the space they stood upon was. How little space there was to run from danger here. The footing was slick and there was a lingering floating lightness, as though they weren't entirely _on _the ground they were on.

Knuckles fought the urge to duck, to curl his shoulders in, to find some way, impossible in this open space, to hide, or failing that, to flee. He gritted his teeth and stood straight instead and glanced at the doctor, who for the first time did look a little uneasy.

Knuckles had no reassuring words to offer – only his best efforts to find what they'd come for and get out as soon as possible.

He shut his eyes against the disturbing view and concentrated. Threat and comfort both fluttered at his awareness and were pushed aside as he sought for something more concrete, more focussed, an energy that was familiar. For some sense of control in this place that defined the lack of it.

He opened his eyes.

"This way."

He'd been afraid the human wouldn't be able to keep up but running here was like running in a dream. There was no logic to it, no pace, you couldn't trust your eyes to know if you were making progress. Knuckles' feet skipped and slipped on the surface, his body so strangely light that air resistance was a hindrance. He might have been trying to run through that churning sky instead.

Creeping anxiety building down the back of his neck let him know they were being tracked, that the bad thing knew they were here. He pressed on. There was no other choice, there were no hiding places no alternate routes, no way to go faster.

This time it would catch up.

The chaos emerald was close now but the bad thing was closer.

The doctor had stopped and turned to face it, raising the weapon he'd used before.

Knuckles knew that wouldn't help, knew it somehow in every bit of him, tip to tail. Knew he should shout a warning, knew he should stop, should help, but before he'd found the courage there was the other presence. More than a sense this time. A feeling. A voice.

"_The emeralds."_

Knuckles ran. Ran to that last, still, point of light. Spinning to look back, as he reached it, he saw the bad thing for the first time.

It had ignored the doctor, ignored the weapon, was coming for _him_, and Knuckles knew why now because it was the monster, was the chaos creature that had sprang from Tikal's fury, that she'd gone to stop and never returned from.

Knuckles crouched over the chaos emerald, clutching it and fighting to replace panic with control. But the creature reared over him, shrieking in contempt and fury and Knuckles, for long seconds, was a child again, crouched helpless on the steps of the broken shrine as everyone he knew was dying below him.

"_Be brave. You were right."_

The voice was warm. The lights were warm. He blinked. Lights? A soft lilac light glow hovered between him and the enraged monster. The yellow of a clear, true sunlight he hadn't seen in years glowed in his hand where he clutched the chaos emerald. A blue-green warmth of a summer sea glowed somewhere at his back, the surface warmth and powerful depths more felt than seen.

"I don't know what..."

Knuckles didn't finish, wasn't even sure what he was asking.

The doctor grabbed his arm, shattering the moment and the monster swept aside the lilac light with one blow and aimed the next at Knuckles who stumbled back, caught between confusion and threat.

"If you can get us out of here now really might be the time!"

Knuckles glanced at him wide eyed. The still moment had passed but there was some scattered remnants of the calm needed for control still lingering. Knuckles dragged them together but there wasn't time. The creature leapt at him and there wasn't _time_ and Knuckles _flung_ them away from it.

Even as they tumbled into the torn open sky, Knuckles was unsure whether there was more fear or control in his frantic command and belatedly he struggled for a destination that wasn't simply _away_ but he had already slammed bodily into the ground.

Somewhere.

Knuckles was dimly aware of smells on the air, of daylight, of the doctor's shadow falling across him as he stood. They were somewhere real. But that was as far as he got before the creature screamed again and Knuckles looked up in cold horror. He could see the blue sky above it through the translucent body but it was there and real and in the world.

It swiped down at him and it was too late to move aside.

"_No!" _

Knuckles heard himself shout, had thrown out a hand on instinct to protect himself, but the shout was strangely echoed, doubled. Knuckles looked round half expecting someone at his side but there was no one.

More strangely still the creature had paused. Paused and then… Melted? Dissolved away into the ground or the wind. Gone, although its ominous presence lingered.

He looked down at the chaos emerald in his hand then nestled it in securely with the others in his pack. His hands were shaking as he refastened it. More than his hands. He was shivering all over. Adrenaline and chaos energy surged through every inch of him as he fought to calm himself.

Before he'd even gotten close another voice called out. Fierce and amused and ringing with challenge.

"Oh egg-man, Really? You thought coming back was a good idea?"

Knuckles stepped around the doctor for a clearer view and stopped dead at the sight of the blue hedgehog.

A crashing sense of unreality washed over him – where _were_ they? How had his panicky careless lack of control landed them at the doorstep of the hedgehog?

The mocking grin fell from the hedgehog's face as though the sight of him was an equal shock.

"You?" Chaos energy flared to life in the hedgehog's quills. Leaping and crackling and spilling out into the air around him in a shockingly uncontrolled display of power.

And then the hedgehog was a blur. Incoming. Impossibly fast.

But it wasn't the first terrifyingly impossible thing Knuckles had survived today and he was already moving by reflex to intercept the charge, to meet it with all of the remaining energy that still danced through nerves and skin and spines.

He swung for the hedgehog, a blow that was more than physical, that impacted in the moment the hedgehog had curled himself up into a lethal living cannonball. It impacted against spines with a crash like thunder and sent them both flying. The hedgehog back into the air to crash down on the street and Knuckles tumbling off his feet with the backlash.

The hedgehog was down but Knuckles himself was struggling to get back to his feet, shivering with fatigue instead of energy now. The doctor hauled him the rest of the way up and advanced on the motionless hedgehog, leaning over him to pluck a nondescript bag from over his shoulder. He plucked one ring out of it and rolled it between his fingers thoughtfully.

Knuckles leaned over the hedgehog in wary curiosity. He was alive. Energy still wound around him. So much energy.

'_A child like you'_ Tikal had said, but the hedgehog had attacked him. Instantly, without hesitation. Even in the face of an existing enemy, the doctor, standing right there. The very moment he'd seen him.

"Get away from him!"

Knuckles turned his aching head to face another new voice. A fox. And he was another chaos user because he leapt into the air to hurtle towards them, as Knuckles stared wondering how it was even possible for one day to hold so many shocks.

Leapt into the air and flew.

The doctor had fired twice and missed both times with his improvised weapon as the fox dodged through the air. Abruptly he cast it aside and grabbed Knuckles' arm

"Time to go!"

He held up a ring. "Just think of the other end right?"

He threw it and in the next moment they were through.


	7. Chapter 7

Knuckles blinked, staring around and struggling once again to process where he was.

There was shouting. A clatter of weapons and the doctor's voice, smooth and calm and amused over the top of it all.

Knuckles shook the human's hand off his arm.

"Where are we?"

The doctor glanced down at him. "Somewhere that _used_ to be my laboratory. Something these imbeciles seem to have forgotten."

Knuckles looked up. The other humans were backing off. Lowering weapons. Looking confused. Staring from him to the doctor and back again.

"You found another one?" One of them asked. The doctor sprang at the speaker and cuffed him at the back of his head. Knuckles was more startled than the other human seemed to be at the casual blow. Was this how humans interacted?

"Clearly," the doctor was saying. "Well done for remembering that you have eyes in your head."

The man shrugged of the blow, straightened up and gestured at Knuckles himself.

"What would you like us to do with… it?"

The doctor clapped Knuckles on the back, considerably less forcefully.

"Well, make him welcome of _course_." He smiled expansively. "We've come a long way to get back here."

_Back_. The word stirred Knuckles' shaken thoughts into something more coherent.

"I need to get back," he said aloud. "I can't stay here. I need some of those rings. I need to get back."

The doctor's voice took on a tone of dismayed surprise.

"And leave that creature running amuk, that you brought here?"

Knuckles' heart sank.

"Oh all by accident of _course_," the doctor went on, "But _here_ nevertheless. And the hedgehog? You seemed concerned enough about him before, and I couldn't fail to notice that he attacked you before me, even with our… shared history?"

"I didn't… That's not what I… I don't mean to abandon my responsibilities," Knuckles said.

It was just that the _need_ to be back was almost physical. The need to see the Master Emerald with his own eyes. A constant tug on his attention that he hadn't even been aware of before. A feeling like homesickness for a place he had never even considered home.

But the doctor was right. The chaos creature was here and the only explanation for it was that it had followed him. Had been empowered to follow him by his removals of the emeralds. With hindsight its growing threat fit perfectly with his collection of them. His own desire to escape his exile had led to this danger now loose on a world that knew nothing of it.

And as for the hedgehog, he hadn't even begun to work out what to think of him or do about him.

"To which end, I should probably get back up to date, myself," the doctor moved to a series of screen so smoothly integrated with the walls Knuckles hadn't even registered them.

"Let's have a look at the latest antics of the 'Blue Devil' shall we?"

"Blue devil?"

"Oh yes, that's what your hedgehog is known as in these parts."

Knuckles stared at the screens as they filled with information. The hedgehog was so feared here they believed him some sort of demon?

The information was stories from news-tellers – reports of traps set for savage wild animals destroyed, infrastructure smashed, communications equipment brought down. Havoc.

Chaos. Uncontrolled and dangerous.

Like the energy he'd seen rippling through the hedgehog himself.

"He shouldn't be here," he said.

_Neither should I_, rang in his mind, but what choice did he have now?

"I have to go back to where the hedgehog is. I have to find the creature. I have to keep-"

He cut himself off.

"I don't know where to start," he admitted.

The doctor clapped him on the back again.

"Fortunately, I do."

* * *

"Sonic!"

Someone was yelling and Sonic opened his mouth to tell them to stop, that he was right here, his ears two inches away from the yelling voice and ringing with it.

All that came out was a gurgle.

"Sonic!"

Then someone else was shushing and someone else again pulling him half upright and he blinked and opened his eyes and lifted his hands to squash his ears down flat against his head because someone was still _yelling_ and it wasn't even a voice he knew.

"Okay." Said a voice Sonic _did_ know. It was Tom's 'settle it down' voice, deployed for bar scuffles and neighbourly rows and misbehaving kids. "Enough shouting. He's okay. You two know each other?"

"Guh?" Sonic managed, letting go of one ear warily and trying to shake off the aching giddiness to focus on the unfamiliar voice.

The voice of a fox. An actual fox. Staring wide eyed and worried at him, Tom's hand reassuringly on his shoulder even as his other hand mimed 'quiet with a finger to his lips.

Sonic rolled his eyes back to see who he was leaning against in that case and found Maddie's worried smile.

"''M okay." He sat up straighter, then stood.

The fox stared at him.

"I thought I was too late," he said. "I _was_ too late sort of."

Sonic stared back. "It's fine." Sonic was no longer sure if the dazed feeling was injury or surprise – between the echidna and now this fox after ten years of nothing but craning his neck to look up at humans, he didn't know where to start.

"Hi," he tried, although it seemed a little late for that. "Where…" He stopped – _how_ or _what_ or _why_ crowded behind 'where' and he couldn't pick one.

It turned out not to matter because the fox had already launched into a flurry of explanation unprompted.

"I was looking for you." He waved a device as though that explained anything but didn't stop talking. "Longclaw said tha-"

Sonic froze for a split second then cut the fox off mid-word.

"Longclaw's _alive?" _He heard his voice shaking, felt instant tears threaten but didn't care about either.

The fox dropped his gaze, hesitated, looked back up.

"I'm sorry, Sonic. She… She was real sick last winter, and… then the monster came."

"The thing that was with Robotnik and," he gritted his teeth, "the echidna."

"Yes. It had been attacking villages. It never appeared for long but it was dangerous. Longclaw was trying to find a way to stop it. She thought the echidna ruins might have something that would-"

"Ruins?"

The fox nodded.

"Something the echidnas did freed the monster and it destroyed them."

Sonic scowled. "Today kinda looks like it didn't finish the job!"

The fox nodded. "Yeah. It vanished when they did but, it's been coming back more and more."

"And now it's here."

Another nod.

"And Longclaw..."

The fox's muzzle wrinkled up. "She was so brave. The villagers ran, she bought them to time to get away. But..."

Tears beaded the fur around the fox's eyes and Sonic scrubbed his hand across his own.

"C'mere" He stepped forward, waving off the support of Tom and Maddie, and pulled the cub into a hug. "What's your name?"

"Tails."

Sonic leaned forward a little, looking over the cub's head and down his back and seeing that the plural was indeed accurate.

"Cool. So," he hesitated, not sure he wanted to talk about it himself, let alone upset the little fox again. "How long had you known Longclaw?"

The fox shrugged without breaking the hug. "Since I was little. She found me exploring. She knew so many things. She taught me. She looked after me." He pulled away and gave Sonic a watery smile. "I didn't think I _needed_ looking after but…"

Sonic laughed and if it was also a bit shaky and damp then everyone ignored it.

"Yeah, me neither."

Tails' muzzle trembled again and Sonic patted him on the back. "So Longclaw raised you too. You realise this makes you like practically my little brother or something, right buddy?"

Tails smiled for real this time.

"We were looking for you. She'd _been_ looking for you. Always. As soon as it was safe. I found the mural in the ruins before she found me and I showed her and then we both looked. I built this to look." He waved the device again. "But there was only one ring left. We couldn't just guess. She was sure though. Sure as sure that we'd find you. She said that was proof."

Sonic had lost track in the sudden tumble of words now Tails was talking again.

"What was proof?"

Tails stopped. Blinked. "I said. Didn't I say? I found it in the ruins, I found the mural. She said it was a _mural_ a picture painted in wet plaster so it would stay, so it wouldn't flake off."

"Tails!" Sonic cut across this sudden unexpected lecture on ancient art techniques. "A picture of _what?"_

"You."

* * *

"What are you doing?" was the question Knuckles asked, watching the doctor work. _Why am I waiting here, _was the question he actually wanted answered.

The place was alien. As different from any memory of home as the mushroom planet had once been. There was no sky. Well there _was_ of course but nowhere in sight. Not a single window in the metal walls gave out onto fresh air. The light was hard and bright and everywhere but was neither twilight nor sunlight. The floor was cold and hard and the walls too close.

He was tired and restless and, in defiance of all logic, lonelier than he'd been when he'd been actually alone.

He wondered if, despite the doctor's description of the hedgehog's attacks, that on some level he'd still hoped that Tikal's words '_like you' _had held some deeper truth than just the ability to channel chaos. That he'd hoped there was someone else who could understand what it was like.

But the hedgehog had been the aggressor. There was no possible doubt. Knuckles had barely been on his feet when he'd attacked. Reeling and shaken from the creature's attack and baffled by its abrupt retreat and utterly unprepared. Nothing but raw chaos, sheer emotion driven reflex, had saved him from being smashed into a pulp by the hedgehog.

The doctor hadn't answered his question and Knuckles asked again. The answer came back instantly this time, fast and impatient.

"Attempting to make sure the next time the hedgehog interferes that we're not reliant on you and it kicking sparks off one other." He slapped a few buttons, shoved his face closer to a screen then spun away from it and continued.

"Since I doubt you've got much to offer in the scientific department I'd suggest you take a seat and get some rest – it would be a shame if the next encounter ended with you flat on your back instead."

In spite of the tone Knuckles had to admit there was truth in that. And he _was_ tired. Body and spirit both.

The chairs, one of which the doctor was whisking about the room in so enthusiastically, were oversized, meant for humans not echidnas and it was easy to slump right down in them. Closing his eyes was harder but once they _were_ closed staying awake suddenly seemed the harder thing after all. He drifted.

_He crouched on the torn ground, amid the shattered stone and fallen bodies, the searing light of the Master Emerald so bright that his own shadow stretched long and trembling before him was pit-black, as though he could fall into it and vanish forever._

_Faces of echidnas he knew lay wide eyed and motionless. Warriors who'd let him scuffle with them, as he haphazardly learned the reach of his clumsy, growing body, stared lifelessly at the sky, or worse, leapt towards him, reaching for the Master Emerald with their eyes unrecognisable in terrified fury._

_Instinct drove him two limping steps forward to place himself between the attack and the Master Emerald because it was supposed to be safe, it was supposed to be protected and instead it was tumbled, laying on the dark wet ground for anyone to snatch and it was a wrongness that drove panic through every nerve._

_He never reached the warrior that reached for it – the monster got there first and the adult echidna was smashed to the ground. Knuckles turned away, squeezing his eyes shut until Tikal called to him._

"_Come on!"_

_Somewhere safe she'd promised but nowhere was safe and he was crouched instead on the spongy, stinking ground of an alien world, braced against the oncoming attack of some animal he couldn't even put a name to._

_He was ducking away from a blow he couldn't prevent, caught between the monster, and the sunlight-yellow emerald, and nothing was safe. _

_He was on his feet, standing between the Master Emerald and… something… Power flowed at his back and there was no question he would defend it but… from what?_

_He was on his knees and the worst had happened, tearing loss, failure and dark empty places._

"_Guardian. Knuckles."_

_He couldn't see, couldn't hear but there was someone there even so. Purple light._

"_Be brave."_

He fell out of the chair with a crash.

The doctor only raised his eyebrows.

"Sleep well?"

Knuckles shuddered from head to tail.

"No."

The doctor smiled and Knuckles stared.

"You will tonight. We're going to have a busy afternoon. The hedgehog is coming."


	8. Chapter 8

Sonic stood on tiptoe to look at the scatter of parts and tools spread out before Tails on the Wachowski's dinner table. The fox himself sat perched atop four cushions but seemed oblivious to the precarious seating, head bent low over the work.

On the other side of the room, Tom was on the phone, warning Wade and discussing with Maddie whether there was any government contact they ought to tell, whether they could be trusted.

"So can you alter that thing so it'll find him instead of me?" Sonic asked. "Looks like we find him, we find Robotnik."

Tails nodded without looking up. "I think I can. Sort of. The energy is similar. There were always multiple signals. Factoring out you is harder than factoring out the residual energy from home, and me."

"You?"

Tails shrugged. "A bit. Not like you show up. And I don't run faster than the speed of sound."

Sonic grinned. "Flying though. Very cool…"

Tails smiled. "The echidna shows up more like the signal from the ruins themselves. It's similar but… I don't know. There are overlaps. It's easier to detect in some ways, not as changeable. But it's not so different that it's easy to filter out this without filtering out that. Y'know."

"No idea at all!" Sonic admitted blithely. "Longclaw _knew_ about this stuff?" He frowned concentrating on a memory. "She said… she hadn't seen anything like it."

Tails nodded, fingers still moving swiftly and certainly over the components. "Not to the level you have it."

"What _is_ it?"

"The echidnas call it chaos energy."

Sonic blinked. "Well that's not ominous at all."

Overhearing, Maddie raised her eyebrows.

"Not wrong though - it brought plenty of that!"

Sonic made a face, "Yeah. I guess. Sorry."

At his side, Ozzy butted up against him, and Sonic patted his head absently and turned his attention back to Tails.

"Not as much havoc as Robotnik and his new buddy will cause with it though. How're we doing?"

Tails refastened a screw on the side of the device and picked it up.

"Ready to give it a go."

He pressed a button and the device beeped once as the screen lit up.

Tails swung it slowly back and forth, his sweeps becoming shorter as he fiddled with settings.

"Is it working?" Sonic leaned over his shoulder to look at the display.

"Yeah." Tails looked up from the screen and pointed. "That way." He frowned. "Can't tell how far though without something to calibrate by."

Tom was off the phone and watching. "I've got a road map. Does that thing have a compass so we can get any closer than 'sort of north west?' We can at least rule some places out."

After a brief, confusing discussion about direction terminology which Sonic largely ignored, Tails and Tom had agreed a line on the road map and pencilled it in.

"We've got to be looking for gaps between towns, don't we?" Tom said. "I don't see super-secret lab buildings as a suburban planning feature. Or giant trucks not drawing notice."

Tails ran his finger along the line. "I could triangulate. If I could get a bit of distance off northeast or southwest of this line."

Sonic grinned and stuck out his hand. "Now you're talking. How far and how fast?"

* * *

"Now _this_ is more like it!"

Knuckles watched stared at the huge wheeled machine the doctor was so enthusiastically proudly gesturing it, arms spread wide to take it all in.

It was an ugly thing to Knuckles' mind, sleek and huge and black. But if it made the hedgehog half as uneasy as it made him then maybe it would be enough of an edge. He couldn't fight on two fronts at once. Couldn't deal with Chaos the monster and with the chaos energy the hedgehog used so erratically. Not both at once. Not on next to no sleep and a day-ago meal. No without having to at least hope there wasn't yet a third threat at his back in the shape of the doctor himself.

"What does it do?" he asked.

"Anything." The answer came in gleeful tones. "Lab. Transport. Weapon. Everything we need to eliminate the threat."

Knuckles frowned and the doctor continued.

"If we _need_ to of course. You must be a least a little interested in how it came by this power? Do you know? Do you know how _you_ did?"

Knuckles rolled a spine between his fingers before pushing it back out of his face.

"No," he said after a moment. "Some echidnas just are."

The doctor regarded him thoughtfully.

"And hedgehogs?"

Knuckles shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."

"Hmm." The doctor waved towards steps extending from the vehicle. "Well. Shall we?"

Knuckles preceded him up the steps and after a moment a vibration through the structure told him they were in motion. He looked up at the doctor still stood beside him, although his attention was on a complicated glove within which his fingers moved busily.

"Who's controlling the direction?" Knuckles asked.

"The computer. It leaves my attention free for more interesting matters. Step to your right, please."

Knuckles shifted sideways, looking round automatically to see which bit of equipment he was in the way of. Instead his vision was bathed in bright blue light. It was dazzling and he squeezed his eyes shut, staggered against the vehicle's motion and flung out his arms to steady his balance.

When he opened his eyes it was to the sight of numbers and diagrams and outlines floating in mid-air around him. He reached out a hand to touch one.

"Don't touch!

The doctor's reaction was instant and impatient and Knuckles snapped back at once.

"What did you do?" he demanded.

"I assumed you _wanted_ explanations." The doctor's tone was smooth and calm again. "This is a set of energy readings – yours – baselined again the measurements I was able to collect of the hedgehog under the circumstances, and against the rather more detailed ones I was able to take of the single quill."

Knuckles looked anew at the images but the explanation made them not one bit more understandable.

The doctor had already turned away from them.

"But that's for later analysis. For now I'm more interested the retrieving the hedgehog in question."

Knuckles realised he didn't even know how far they _were _from where they'd been. Where had the ring brought them on the doctor's command?

"How long will it take to get back to where he is?" he asked.

The doctor smiled. "If I've done this right, no time at all."

He lifted a sort of metallic cap from an equipment rack and settled it on his head.

"Merely throwing rings seems terribly inefficient," he said. "But it _does_ appear to need conscious, sentient, decision making in or to function. I had no luck at all during your little nap, in getting the system to accept a GPS coordinate. So there's this. You look puzzled."

Knuckles didn't doubt it.

"Of course you're puzzled," the doctor continued apparently happy to elaborate. "The system will cast a ring sufficiently far ahead of this conveyance, calculating of course for relative speed and so forth in order for us to simply drive through to wherever I choose. Instantly."

He tapped the device at his temple.

"Shall we pre-empt the hedgehog coming to disturb us and revisit Green Hills?"

* * *

"How's it looking, Tails?"

Sonic had run out of ways to amuse himself while the fox took his readings and was slouched halfway up a tree he'd been using as a launchpad for seeing how many somersaults he could complete before touching down.

"I'm pretty sure I… Wait. That can't be right."

Sonic leapt lightly down to the ground. "What can't?"

Tails was frowning. "I had it. I was sure but… the signal's gone. Or moved. Or something." He fiddled with a setting again. "Maybe it's just misreading. This can't be right."

"How come?"

"It- says it's back at Green Hills."

Sonic's eyes widened and without stopping to debate it he grabbed Tails and accelerated back off the way they'd come.

* * *

The street was the same one they'd left, alien but clearly civilisation of a sort, clearly inhabited, clearly comparatively quiet. Clearly unused to ring transport though because they were noises of alarm, running, excitement. Knuckles watched and listened on the large screens inside the truck. The doctor was searching for the hedgehog he'd said. He had some way of detecting him, or detecting chaos energy specifically and how many source of that could there be?

Knuckles' thoughts turned uneasily towards the monster. How was he supposed to deal with that? Even if he survived the hedgehog, how was he to undo that error? His attention went to the pack where the chaos emeralds lay. Removing them had released the creature clearly, but he had no idea at all how to recreate whatever Tikal had done. They responded to his attention but what use was that? Feeling and instinct, when what he needed was knowledge.

He pulled his attention away and looked back at the screens. The doctor had known about chaos energy less than a year and had access to his full equipment less than a day, yet seemed more confident in his knowledge of it than Knuckles.

Knuckles had stories, an infant's lessons and guesses in place of science and it wasn't enough to—

His head snapped round a split second before the equipment beeped.

The hedgehog.

Well, maybe there was something to be said for instinct after all.

Knuckles rushed for the hatch and found himself thwarted by the opening mechanism.

"Let me out."

"Oh I think we can deal with the hedgehog and his new buddy from in here don't you?" the doctor smiled.

Open the hatch now unless you want a new one." Knuckles snarled. He couldn't afford to wait. If the hedgehog was here now while the monster was not then this was a window of opportunity which he couldn't afford to waste a second of while waiting to see if alien weapons worked or not.

The doctor shrugged and the hatch hissed open. Knuckles hurtled out.

* * *

Sonic skidded to a halt in the main street, Tails almost tumbling out of the air in his own haste to stop.

Sonic glanced up at him, then back at the looming shape of the mobile weapons lab.

"May want to sit this one out, little buddy."

The fox scowled at him. "I do _not!" _he said, bristling with indignance.

Sonic blinked at the vehemence and Tails' expression changed to a smile.

"Monster, remember? Someone had to at least try."

Sonic eyed the little fox.

"Okay."

A siren whooped from somewhere behind them and Tom pulled round, placing the police car between them and the lab truck before climbing out.

"Wade's going to try and clear people out of the way. I've asked Maggie to help get the message out. At least it means she's keeping clear. What're we looking at?"

"Robots, echidna, Eggman, and possible some monster from out of legend and/or history," Sonic rattled off. "No problem, right?"

Tails giggled, Tom looked incredulous and then the hatch burst open and the echidna was hammering towards Sonic like a missile.

He swatted the car aside as though it was cardboard and Tails yanked Tom clear by the scruff of his shirt as Sonic ducked and the echidna closed on him.

"You don't get me the same way twice, pal." Sonic leapt into the air, cleared the charging echidna from a standing start and delivering a solid sneaker between the shoulder-blades to help him on his way.

The echidna staggered, nearly sprawled but retained his footing just enough to swing round and come at him again. His spines were alight with a dazzling glitter now and the split second it took Sonic to absorb this fact was enough for the second sidestep to be intercepted and it was his turn to stumble clear, fighting to maintain his feet and bring his attention back to his opponent.

The echidna stood his ground this time and swung for him again but Sonic had instantly dismissed curiosity in favour of action and was already moving. A movement which came to an abrupt crashing halt as the blow impacted from the opposite direction. A feint, and Sonic had propelled himself right into it. He cursed and rolled over gasping, to stagger back to his feet. He launched himself back towards the echidna and missed entirely this time as the echidna had stumbled back to fall to the floor himself.

Sonic took no more than a step in his direction before an explosion rocked the street and threw everyone back down except Tails who'd leapt vertically upwards and still hovered, dodging blasts from the truck and weaving his way towards it.

Sonic could hear Tom shouting instructions by radio – he was unhurt and Tails, reckless as his approach seemed was also fine. That left the echidna and Sonic spun round to where he'd last seen him.

And hesitated.

A creature loomed over the echidna, taller than either of them, semi transparent with an oily wet gleam and Sonic wondered what he'd missed in the breathless moments on the floor because the echidna's face was an expression of pure horror. Still half on his back, he'd half raised himself on his hands but gotten no further. Frozen in shock. Staring.

"Oh yeah." Sonic stared at the thing too. "Monster. Hey, drippy! We're fighting here. Form a queue!"

The creature ignored him but the words seem to startle the echidna back into motion and he slashed at the translucent, but clawed hand that reached for him. The blow passed straight through, but momentum carried him back to his feet.

For a moment he hesitated staring between Sonic and the creature. Sonic paused too, determined not to fall for a feint again. Instead, from the corner of his eye a flash of light alerted him to a different threat and he leapt forward, to meet Robotnik's hoverpod as it rose from hatch in the roof of the truck, already firing.

He landed already running. "Missed!"

He swerved another shot and focused back on the echidna who didn't flinch as Sonic dropped into a spin. Instead he twisted into the incoming attack as though he actually thought he could field a ballistic ball of hedgehog.

He almost managed it, doubled fists swatting Sonic aside like a volleyball, to ricochet off a parked car even as he himself went down. There was a crunch of skull against sidewalk that made Sonic flinch - even on his enemy's behalf. Even as picked himself back up, keeping a wary idea on the now motionless echidna, brushing glass from his spikes and flattening his ears against the shrieking alarm he'd triggered. It was a struggle to catch his breath, pain lancing across his ribs snatched at his attempts before they were half completed.

Another electronic cacophony joined the car alarm and Sonic spun round only to see Tails, a handful of wires and trailing components in one hand, the other clutching the cockpit rim of Robotnik's pod as it bucked in the air, tossing the fox hither and thither along with it.

"Ignorant wretch!" Robotnik howled. "Vandal!"

Tails grinned and let go, zooming clear to hover in mid air. "Was that bit important then?"

Sonic laughed. "Nice job, buddy!"

But Tails wasn't smiling any more. "Look!" he pointed and Sonic spun round.

The creature had ignored this byplay and closed on the echidna again. A huge hand wrapped itself right around his head and lifted him effortlessly into the air, only to slam him back to the ground.

Sonic cast a glance at Tails who'd flinched, grimacing.

"Hey!" Sonic shouted at the monster again. "I _said_ there's a queue. You gotta problem with this guy then get in line!"

And he was off and running again.

Maybe the thing couldn't be hurt, not really. But enough speed would make a big enough splash to cause it some serious inconvenience and Sonic hit it in a spin, energy crackling from his spines, and with speed enough to turn it to spray.

He landed on hands and knees on the other side of dizzily stirring echidna. He stood and looked down at him and the world abruptly blurred. Pain shot through his side again and he found himself looking up from the sidewalk once again. The echidna had thrown him – grabbed his leg, from where he lay and simply chucked him across the street.

"Oh that was a _mistake!" _Sonic shot back across the road and the echidna was back on his feet and had thrown up his hands once again but it was the wrong move this time because Sonic dropped into a skidding, careening slide and swept his ankles out from under him.

The echidna went down hard on his back once again and Sonic's momentum carried him a further half a street before he skidded to a stop. Between him and the echidna, Robotnik descended and Sonic almost burned right through this pair of sneakers too in his haste to change direction but Robotnik was already climbing hard and then there was a ring and the pod was through it and gone.

Sonic stared at the empty space it had been in. Panting. Hurting and furious and confused.

"He left him behind," Tails said, sounding equally confused.

He was right, Sonic realised. The echidna still lay on the sidewalk. Whatever Robotnik had dived down to retrieve it wasn't his newest ally.

Sonic could feel frustration, as tangible as the energy that crackled from his quills, but with the echidna out cold on the ground and Robotnik having already high-tailed it, there was no outlet. Sonic stared down at the echidna, trying not see, overlaid on the motionless body, a horde of them crashing through the windows and doors, taking aim at Longclaw, reaching for him, weapons raised...

"I think he's going to come quietly now, Sonic," Tom said, coming up at his shoulder. "Stand down, eh?"

Sonic shivered abruptly and looked up, wide eyed. What were they supposed to do with him now anyway?

"The dog cage's not going to cut it," he managed. "If this guy goes on a tear-"

"We'll use the cell down the station," Tom said. "Not sure it's ever had more than the occasional rowdy drunk in it but it's the best we can do."

Sonic nodded for lack of a better idea and Tom scooped the limp echidna up.

"I'll call Maddie."

"What? Why?"

Tom raised his eyebrows. "You both look like you've been through a hedge strimmer and I don't make a habit of leaving arrestees unconscious on the floor."

"You knocked Eggman clean out!"

"I was running from him, not locking him up. And he wasn't a teenager."

Sonic stared at Tom trying to work out why he was so immoveable on this point. He glanced back at the echidna. _Was_ he his own age?

"It would be useful to be able to talk to him," Tails put in timidly from behind him. Sonic had almost forgotten he was there and turned to argue.

"Remember the tracker – the way it was flicking between you and him. He's something to do with all this."

Sonic scowled. "Fine. Just don't blame me if he takes everyone's head off when he wakes up."

Maddie arrived so quickly that Sonic was certain she'd ignored Tom's request to stay clear of the fight. She checked over Sonic in spite of his promising he was fine and then moved to look over the echidna thoughtfully where he lay on the bench in the police station's single cell.

"You really did a number on each other didn't you?"

Sonic scowled. "They tried to kill me! They did ki- They-" He broke off, remembering that he was wrong in having thought Longclaw dead. For a moment he considered leaving altogether and burning off some of this anger out at speed up over the hills.

But if the echidna woke up and lashed out, Tom and Maddie and Tails would still be here. His first friends here and his only one from his own world. He scowled again and threw himself down in a corner to wait.

Maddie returned her attention to the echidna, fishing a light from her bag and shining it in his eyes one at a time. She made a satisfied noise. "Well he's got quite the lump on his head but I don't think there's any actual injury that should stop him waking up."

"Oh great. We planning to still be here to get thumped when that happens?" Sonic muttered.

Maddie ignored this and continued.

"I assume he's from your world too, Sonic?"

"Yes!"

Tom was emptying out the torn backpack the echidna had been carrying and finding nothing but basic supplies.

"You sure?" he asked, "He arrived with Robotnik, and look..."

Sonic glanced over to see Tom holding up large dried and shrivelled mushroom caps

"Mushrooms. Well that sucks as a snack. So?"

"He was on your mushroom world. He must have met Robotnik there."

"Yeah and decided they both had it out for superfast hedgehogs!"

Maddie was frowning as she stepped away.

"What?" Tom asked.

"He's not just banged up from scrapping with Sonic here."

Sonic stilled his protests to listen, waiting to point out that the echidnas were always fighting with someone and here was the proof.

"If anybody had brought an animal into the practice in that condition, that wasn't a stray, I'd have been asking some serious questions." Maddie glanced back at the dishevelled echidna.

"Apart from the fact he's a ball of muscle, he hasn't really been eating enough. Systematically. He's covered in old injuries under all that fur, which is in such a state he's clearly been sleeping rough. No one ever treated that broken tail before it healed, and something's taken a chunk out of his leg that I can't even begin to guess at. Do you have bears on your world, Sonic?"

Sonic blinked at her. "Well, yeah, but they don't go around _biting_ other people! And anyway I thought we'd decided he was living away with the mushrooms and making pally with Eggman?"

"But I thought your mushroom planet was supposed to be a safe place."

Sonic stared from Maddie to Tom to the echidna. Tails followed his gaze.

"It was."


	9. Chapter 9

Knuckles' head pounded and he deeply didn't want to open his eyes. Had no interest at all in discovering what fight was next to fight, what threat was next to face. He opened them anyway. What other option was there?

He swallowed back a moan at the aching brightness of the lights and kept them open. Another metal ceiling instead of sky was above him once again. Before he could process the thought that they'd successfully fled what has clearly been an ambush, it became obvious that they hadn't.

In a blur of motion that made Knuckles' head spin more than it was already doing, the hedgehog was standing over him.

"Fair warning," he said. "Don't start anything you don't want me to finish."

Knuckles considered this. A threat instead of an attack and the hedgehog looked almost as dishevelled and fed up as he himself felt.

He rolled out from under him and tumbled to the floor and onto his feet, stepping back two short steps to put striking distance between them and holding his ground there. It placed the hedgehog silhouetted against the light which made Knuckles' head pound further but that couldn't be helped. He needed enough distance to watch the fox and the two humans as well as the hedgehog.

"Start something?" Knuckles edged sideways. The fox and the humans shuffled away as well, keeping their distance, allowing him to claim the defensible corner position, while the hedgehog maintained the higher ground. "_Start_ something?"" Knuckles repeated. "I'd had my feet on this world for three seconds, hedgehog, when you attacked me!"

"Oh and you want to pretend you don't know why that was?" The hedgehog's voice had flashed into instant, baffling fury. Blue fire lightning-cracked along his spines, making Knuckles pull energy of his own around himself in instinctive reaction.

There was only one thing a rogue chaos user could want from him after all and Knuckles' hand reached back, towards the bag of chaos emeralds which should have been at his shoulder. His mind caught up with his body a split second later as he realised it had closed on empty air.

Shock, through panic, to anger of his own took milliseconds.

"Give. Them. Back."

The hedgehog had the gall to look actually amused. A glittering, dangerous grin.

"Me? Sorry to disappoint, buddy. Whatever you were toting, Robotnik took 'em when he high-tailed it outta here and left you to have your little nap on the blacktop."

A second wave of horrified shock swept up and over Knuckles and he found himself shaking his head.

"No… No he wouldn't have. He… he had the chance before and he didn't…" Realisation came like a cresting wave dragging him under as it broke over his head. "He was waiting until I had them all."

"You stood right there and watched while he stole my rings." There was no sympathy to be had from the hedgehog. "You run with thieves you're gonna get robbed." His expression hardened further. "Oh wait. It's not just thieves. It's kidnappers and killers you ran with, right?"

The pounding headache tore at Knuckles' attention from one direction. The shocky panic that refused to settle dragged at it from the other. The question refused to make sense.

"What?" He put a hand up to shade his eyes from the painful light, even knowing it risked obscuring the hedgehog's attack if it came.

"Sonic." The male human had spoken. Had approached the hedgehog. "This guy… he couldn't have been any older than you when that happened."

Knuckles felt although he was floundering just under the surface of a conversation that was flowing away without him. He fought to get his head above the surface.

"When _what_ happened?" he demanded.

The hedgehog whirled his attention back to Knuckles.

"When you lot tried to kidnap me and killed-" he fumbled the word, began again. "_as good as _killed Longclaw!"

The first protest was out of Knuckles' mouth before thought had intervened.

"They wouldn't..."

"Right." For a split second the hedgehog looked almost understanding through the anger. "And Robotnik wouldn't rob you."

Sick horror rose in Knuckles' gut but it was more than the hedgehog's words, because there was something worse coming. Something that had been worse then and was worse now and put the lie to his denials because he'd seen it and known it. The warriors had been afraid of the hedgehog child, Tikal had been angry at what they'd tried to do about it, and bad thing – the monster – was that fear and fury conjured into chaotic life of its own.

And it was coming under the door. Pooling and rising. Something that was almost echidna-shaped but twisted and distorted into weird disturbing proportions.

Something in Knuckles' reaction had caught the hedgehog's attention because he followed his terrified gaze then turned back to him to add grimly, "And you don't run with monsters without getting eaten."

"It won't care whether we're on the same side," Knuckles forced out between breaths that he was trying desperately to keep anything approaching under control.

"I figured." The hedgehog had turned at least partly in the creature's direction. He looked poised to spring at it and Knuckles stared at him. Couldn't he _feel_ it? It was taking Knuckles everything he had not to smash down the wall behind them and flee as far and as fast as he could from the thing.

The fox was hustling the two humans away from the door and the looming creature before touching down beside the hedgehog, who glanced back over his shoulder at Knuckles.

"Well? You want to start or shall I just go ahead?" Challenge danced in his eyes and chaos light danced in his spines.

Knuckles took a shaking breath and gritted his teeth. He reached out to that same flickering unseen world. He was weary and afraid and a world away from where he should be but at this level the distance meant little. Somewhere the Master Emerald was out there, even if he wasn't and its touch was courage and warmth and strength.

The chaos emeralds circled his awareness too, but one touch was enough to make him baulk, flinching away from something cold. Oily and sharp and hard.

The feeling joined the roiling horror of the monster deep in his gut, a visceral wrongness. But he couldn't help it now. He opened eyes he hadn't realised he'd closed to glare at the creature. Found the hedgehog at his side looking at him quizzically.

"Up for this are you?" he said and the doubt in his voice was enough to drive send Knuckles flying into the attack in answer.

He flung himself bodily against the creature, intending to tackle it back through the door. To buy them some space. The door burst open under their combined weight – the creature was solid enough to hit at any rate.

And then it wasn't and Knuckles was falling through it to sprawl on the corridor floor. Water that wasn't water rose around him, colder than any real water could be and still flow, and he couldn't move or breathe or think.

Abruptly he hit the floor again, knocking breath back into his body in a painful gasp.

The hedgehog whipped past overhead as Knuckles rolled onto his back. Spray as hard and sharp as knives took chunks out of the corridor wall, missed the hedgehog, then swept around back at him. Dizzy and hasty, Knuckles curled and twisted, snatched enough energy to wrap around himself. Felt the not-water flash into spray as it hit his spines.

A claw bigger than his head reformed and was sheared off at the wrist by the fox barrelling straight through, a second one blasted into vapour by the hedgehog - nothing more in the moment than a blur of blue light.

He landed in a crouch beside Knuckles, dragged him to his feet as he stood himself and surveyed the re-forming creature.

"Open to suggestions for not just spending all day going 'splash bang splash bang'." He looked from Knuckles to Tails.

"Well? It's _your_ lot's monster, and Tails – you've fought it before. Ideas? Quickly?"

Knuckles made himself look back at the thing. He shook his head.

"Before today I'd seen it exactly once. And it..." _killed my friends while I watched and snivelled about it then ran away_. He shook his head, left the sentence unfinished.

The fox was already talking, filling the gap.

"We never found a way. Only ever just kept it distracted, kept it busy. Eventually it always went. It doesn't behave like a real _thing!" _he went on. "Not like a solid thing or a liquid thing. It can alter its own viscosity – at will. On purpose or by reflex or both – I've been trying for years to find something that can stop it."

"I know what can stop it," Knuckles said. "I just… don't know _how_".

He'd undone the 'how'. In his stupid, selfish desire to escape his exile, he'd undone the 'how'. Freed the monster. Undone everything Tikal had done to keep the world safe from it.

His stomach lurched, bright glittering warning shooting up and down his spine at a disturbance that shook even the Master Emerald.

"And Robotnik has them."

"Okay," the hedgehog said. "That bit we can deal- what's it doing?"

The monster's head had snapped round. Knuckles shivered.

"It knows as well."

Faster than it had re-formed, it collapsed again, pooling and thinning and disappearing into the floor.

"See," the fox said as the others stared. "It can alter its structure so much it can just fade away through stuff. Where do you even start?"

"Where's it gone more to the point?" asked the hedgehog. "I mean I'd _love_ to see Eggman get a visit but..."

Knuckles was shaking his head, the hedgehog had no idea. "He has the chaos emeralds. He.. What if he can…"

He put his head in his hands, too appalled to finish. "This is my fault."

The hedgehog ignored this.

"How sure are you that thing has gone to Robotnik and not on a rampage we have to do something about right now?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay. So we've got a sec. Start explaining."

Knuckles raised his head. "Explaining?"

"We get you don't know everything that's going on," the fox jumped in, cutting off the hedgehog who'd started to say something impatient. "I don't know everything that's going on, neither does Sonic. But we know different bits. Right? So we should compare? See what we can work out?"

The hedgehog glanced at the fox and his expression softened a little.

"I suppose that makes sense."

Knuckles nodded. "Alright."

"Great! So first things – I'm Tails, this is Sonic and we don't even know who you are."

"Knuckles."

The male human spoke up.

"Right. Are we good here then? I need to go check that thing didn't cause any damage elsewhere in town. We happy about who's in league with Robotnik and who'd not are we? Know who the good guys are?"

Knuckles stared back at the hedgehog.

"Why does this place call you the Blue Devil?"

The hedgehog – Sonic – laughed. "For kicks and giggles and to fleece tourists if they do still."

Knuckles frowned. The laughter had been too instant to be feigned.

"I'll let you explain that one." Both human's left and Knuckles made himself look back at Sonic.

"I saw pictures of the damage..."

Sonic shrugged. "Yeah. There was… an incident? S'all good now."

"Oh."

"Eggman sell you that as the real deal? Evil hedgehog on the loose?"

"Did you have a reason to think a blue hedgehog was a problem?" Tails had interrupted before Knuckles could come up with an answer that wasn't simply an embarrassing admission of being duped.

The hedgehog leaped on the idea.

"Yeah. Let's hear that. What's was your echidnas' problem with me?"

"I don't know."

Sonic scoffed.

"I don't!" Knuckles insisted. "I knew there was a blue hedgehog. Tikal said he – you – were… I think she meant you could use chaos energy."

"The whole superspeedyglowy thing, yeah?"

Knuckles frowned, unable to tell if the hedgehog was taking this seriously.

"Yes. I don't know if they knew anyone who wasn't an echidna who could. I didn't know." He shrugged. "But there's lots of things I don't know about it. I was there to learn."

"Well it kinda seems like it bothered them big time that a hedgehog had it, because they weren't messing about when they came for me!"

Tails had retrieved a backpack and pulled out a device with a small screen which he tapped at.

"Did you know about this?"

He turned the screen round to display a photograph. A dirty and cracked mural on an algae crusted wall. Torrchlight reflect from it obscuring some of the pattern but it was recognisable. A blue hedgehog and a huge clawed machine faced each other across the Master Emerald which dominated the centre of the picture, isolated and unguarded.

He nodded. "Not then. I was too little to be allowed in those parts of the shrine. Even experienced Guardians can be misled by prophecy. No one would tell half-trained children about it. But later. In the books Tikal left with me, there was a copy of the picture."

"Prophecy?" Sonic looked unconvinced but Knuckles nodded.

"That mural has been there since centuries before you were born. What else would you call it?"

"So what's it mean?"

"It's… The _layout _is about tipping points. Choosing a side. But the Guardian is missing from the picture. That's a bad thing. A warning."

His audience of two looked baffled and Knuckles couldn't blame them. He sighed.

"I don't know. Not really. I think the night the warriors went after you was the same night Tikal came for me and said we had to leave. Take the emeralds away. She was upset. Something bad had happened. Was going to happen. Both. That's when the monster came. I never saw her again so I'm _still_ that half-trained child and I don't have the faintest idea what it really means."

"So Sonic escaped to Earth and you escaped to the mushroom planet?"

"Yes. Tikal went back."

Tails nodded. "And she must have stopped the monster somehow because it only turned up again recently."

"Because of me," Knuckles admitted. "She must have used the chaos emeralds to seal it away. And I started taking them. I didn't know."

He stopped. That wasn't the whole truth after all.

"I knew there was something bad there. I'd stopped. And then Robotnik came. He said you'd trapped him there?"

"Yup," the hedgehog agreed readily. "I took offence at him wanting to chop me up for parts to see what I ran on. Didn't mean to drop him in anyone's lap. Longclaw thought that place was empty."

Knuckles nodded. "It was, before I got there I think. Of people anyway. Robotnik had been alone before he found me. He said he just wanted to go home and I thought I was _used_ to wanting to go home and _not_ going but… It was stupid of me."

He looked back at the picture.

"Who showed you this? Did they know what Tikal did? That she got me away?"

Tails' eyes widened and Sonic made a face which Knuckles couldn't begin to interpret.

"Knuckles…" Tails' voice had turned strangely quiet. "I found that in a ruined settlement… It… It looks like… People think… There don't seem to have been any echidna survivors from that night."

Disbelief so strong it was almost blinding and deafening, froze Knuckles to the spot, hand still outstretched to the picture.

But he could see in his mind's eye the bodies on the ground, darkness and fire and the sound of rushing water and screaming voices and the temptation of denial could not be sustained or hidden behind.

He lowered his hand, forced his voice to remain under control.

"I see. Do you have any more questions? I have to find the chaos emeralds. I have to stop the creature. I have to go back. I am out of time for talking."

"We'll help," Tails said with Sonic adding "Yep" almost before the sentence was finished.

"This is not your problem."

Tails scowled. "Was my prob when that thing was attacking the villages back home, still my prob now I've followed it here."

"Your not-buddy egg-man snatched my rings and invaded my home _again_," Sonic said. "He's my problem for as long as he keeps making himself my problem. We're helping."

Knuckles looked at the two of them and found he lacked the energy to contest their choice.

"Alright."


	10. Chapter 10

"So's where Robotnik holed up then? If we really are on the same side now you can start there," Sonic demanded.

The echidna raised his hands hopelessly. "I don't know. We travelled by ring. I've got no landmarks."

Sonic scoffed. "Great. Big help."

The echidna bristled at once. "According to you, _you're_ the one supposed to be this great help!"

Sonic scowled back. "Don't make me regret it already."

"_I_ can help," Tails raised his voice over both of them. "If these chaos emeralds Knuckles is talking about are conduits for the same sort of energy I tracked to find you both, then I can alter the filters again to find _them_."

Sonic shrugged. "Fine. Back to the house for the gear it is then." He eyed Knuckles. "Think you can use a door to my home without kicking it in?"

"What?"

The echidna looked genuinely baffled but the prickle of unsettled emotion like sparks in his spines made Sonic huff in frustration.

"Nothing. Come on then."

He led the way back across town at a run, welcoming even that much movement and pushing just hard enough that the echidna arrived breathless but still on his heels.

Tails raised his eyes at Sonic as he touched down a few seconds later.

"Same side..." he prompted.

"Yeah yeah." Sonic opened the front door. There was a clatter of movement from the next room and Maddie appeared through the doorway, a wary hand clutching a baseball bat. She put it down, leaning against the door-frame when she saw Sonic.

"Tom went on to the station. I came back here to start phoning round a few people. Check no one got caught up in it all."

"And you were going to cosh Robotnik with a bat if he turned up here?" Sonic asked, grinning.

Maddie shrugged. "Yes? I guess. So is there a plan?"

"Find him," Sonic said, the smile falling from his face. Tails was already heading to his improvised workspace. Maddie's gaze followed the little fox.

"So I don't get my kitchen back yet, huh? For some reason I'm not surprised."

Sonic ignored this, pacing the length of the kitchen back and forth, way slower than he wanted to be going. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the echidna, almost as restless, prowling around the edges of the room, peering through doorways and glancing up out of windows as though recce-ing the place for escape or attack.

Worry and curiosity and impatience shifted across his face as Sonic snuck another look. In the absence of the emotionless war-mask, decorated spines and weapons which he conspicuously didn't need, it would have almost been easy to forget he was an echidna. A hunter. A conqueror. Dangerous.

But he was. The long red spines swung around his face with every stalking step and he couldn't have looked more out of place in a suburban kitchen. Whatever else he was he was a fighter.

"You two need to sit down!" Tails' voice broke through Sonic's churning thoughts. "I'm trying to calibrate this thing and you're throwing the readings all over the place."

Knuckles looked startled, and dropped to the floor where he was in something Sonic would have called more crouching than sitting.

"Fine," Sonic said, pulling his attention away. "Gimme two secs to get a snack if this is going to take a wait."

Tails smiled in sympathy. "It's going to take a wait."

"We could probably all do with something to eat," Maddie said, opening a cupboard. Sonic ducked under her and snagged two large bags of chips.

"I'm not hungry-hungry. Just snacky." He tore open one packet and considered the other.

"Tails?"

The fox looked round.

"Superhot-spicy-chilli flavour?" he read aloud from the packet with exaggerated care. "Uh, no thanks."

"Your loss, buddy." Sonic turned to Knuckles and raised the packet as a question.

Knuckles eyed it. "It's food?"

"Uh." Sonic swallowed a huge mouthful trying not to choke on crumbs. "Well – it's a snack. 'Food' might be overselling it. It just tastes good really. I guess there's a stack of calories which gotta count for something."

He tossed the unopened packet into Knuckles' lap but Maddie had plucked it away again before he'd even got a hand to it.

"Sonic, no! That's completely inappropriate."

She looked back at Knuckles. "When was the last time you ate anything that wasn't mushroom?"

Knuckles' expression had turned beleaguered. As though he was more than half sure this must be a trick question. But his eyes hadn't left the bag.

"I don't… Sometimes there was wallwort?"

"Ooookay." Maddie sighed and crossed to the fruit-bowl and handed back a banana. "Have that for starters and we''ll try for some oatmeal."

Sonic made a face. "Seriously? That's supposed to be better?"

"I like oatmeal," Tails said mildly.

Maddy smiled. "I'll do enough."

Knuckles turned the banana over in his hands and sniffed it. Sonic was certain he'd never clapped eyes on one before and was about to chomp down on it skin and all. Ordinarily he'd even have found that funny, but the way the echidna's eyes had followed the food with such intensity had not been funny at all. He really was hungry. And if Maddie's assessment was right, had been for a long time.

"Hey, give them here a sec," Sonic said before realising what he was asking. "Actually, never mind." He sat down just outside of arms-reach. "Just – look you need to peel it." he mimed as he spoke.

Knuckles looked back down at the fruit and pressed his thumbs into the skin, splitting it open. He sniffed again and his eyes widened. He peeled the skin back and took a bite, teeth audibly clacking together as he misjudged the texture of the soft fruit.

His jaw worked as though he was chewing sticky toffee instead of banana but Sonic found himself smiling instead of laughing at the obvious enjoyment on the echidna's face.

"Go slow," Maddie said, but Knuckles did not seem to need the warning. Sonic, who bolted his own food if he was even slightly peckish supposed that said something for Knuckles' self control. It wasn't a feature that his mental image of echidnas as a group included in any form.

He mulled that over, watching Tails work at his equipment, and Maddie at the stove, until interrupted by Maddie speaking up.

"Right," she said. "Oatmeal's up."

Tails accepted a bowl and started eating without even looking round, though a murmur of appreciation did emerge from his general direction.

Knuckles took the bowl cautiously, blowing on it and stirring it around, watching the steam rise before taking a mouthful. He hesitated before swallowing.

"Okay?" Maddie asked. "Not too hot?"

Knuckles shook his head and swallowed.

"It's good. I think… we had this. Something like this. It tastes like-"

"Beige mush?" Sonic asked.

"Winter mornings," Knuckles finished over him in the same breath.

Tails, turned, smiling, spoon in one hand and a tiny screwdriver still in the other.

"Eat it all," he said.

Sonic glanced at him, startled, and finished in chorus. "It'll set you up for the day."

Knuckles looked between them, puzzled.

"Longclaw was a big believer in oatmeal for breakfast," Sonic said in explanation. "Clearly Tails agreed more than I did."

The echidna frowned and for a moment Sonic thought he'd forgotten the name, and felt new anger rise at the idea.

He spoke before Sonic did though. "She was your… foster-teacher?"

Puzzlement interrupted the anger and Sonic looked with curiosity at the echidna. "I'm not sure what you mean. She found me and looked after me when I was a kid. I didn't know my actual parents."

"But she knew about chaos energy?"

"I guess."

"She didn't teach you?"

"No," Sonic answered shortly, wanting out of the conversation. "She told me to hide it."

"It's dangerous to learn on your own." The echidna's voice was still low and thoughtful but Sonic was out of patience.

"It is when hordes of echidnas smash the doors down to drag you off for it!"

Sonic was back on his feet and Knuckles had risen too in reflex.

"Am I wrong then?" the echidna demanded. "Did you not blow up half the power for this whole zone? Are you in control of it right now? Were they so wrong to think you dangerous?"

"Hey!" Maddie said, stepping between them. "No fighting in my kitchen. No alien light shows. Either of you! You take it down a notch or you take it outside. But you both listen up first. I don't know _anything_ about space-magic-super-powers, but the way I piece it together seems like you've both lost people because of this thing. You've both done the best you could to keep people safe from it. And now Robotnik has it and if you start knocking lumps out of each other right now he's the only one who benefits. So either sit down, or step out. Right now."

Sonic took a breath and deliberately relaxed his spines. The flickering blue light, that he hadn't even noticed begin, died away. Knuckles straightened from the fighter's crouch he'd slipped into. He nodded at Maggie.

"I apologise." He turned back to Sonic. "_Do_ we need to go outside?"

Sonic struggled with himself for a moment.

"No," he said finally. "Not until Tails finds us a target and we've somewhere definite to go."

Tails raised a hand tentatively. "Kinda got that down while you two were… debating..."

"Really?" Sonic leapt in one bound to the stool beside Tails to peer at the flickering dot overlaid on the on-screen map.

He swivelled the stool round to grin at Knuckles. "Shall we head out then?"

The echidna did not return the smile but neither did he hesitate.

"Yes."

* * *

Sonic led, setting a pace he thought the others could match and still arrive in a fit state to fight. He came skidding to halt as something loomed on the skyline.

Knuckles was frozen to the spot, staring at the craft as it rose above the cluster of low, fortified bunkers that were the only feature which broke up the empty terrain on either side of the narrow road.

"I've seen that before."

"It's the ship from the mural, right?" Tails said.

Knuckles nodded, dismay all over his face. "How can he have built it so quickly?"

"He was already building this stuff," Sonic said. "Just didn't have a good enough power source. He thought he could get that from me but..."

"He has the chaos emeralds," Knuckles finished. "He has rings. He..." The alarm on his face turned to something approaching panic. "He knows I was hiding something. In the mural he has it. He has… He's going to..."

"Hey," Sonic stepped closer, "You're babbling. Try again. Use all the words. Explain."

Knuckles shook his head and took off at a run towards the ship.

Sonic glanced at Tails who was frowning in concentration, clearly closer to figuring out what Knuckles had been talking about than Sonic was, but he offered no explanation either.

"Okay, then," Sonic said. "Running it is."

He held out a hand for Tails who grabbed it, then accelerated after the echidna, caught and passed, him, grabbing his wrist in passing, over his protests, and accelerating further still.

Sonic dragged them all to a halt and into cover almost beneath the machine.

Tails frowned. "He almost certainly he knows we're here anyway. If I could detect you guys and the emeralds I bet he can too."

"I don't care." Knuckles yanked his wrist free of Sonic's hand and was gone again. And was going to be too late because Sonic had already spotted the telltale glint of a ring, tumbling end of end in front of the craft and growing, looming open to that same musty gloom of the mushroom planet and what in any world could Robotnik want back there?

Knuckles knew whatever it was because he was moving with headlong desperation. Too fast for caution, too fast to stop when the chaos creature rose up out of nowhere, impossibly huge. Many times it's previous height and more lizard than echidna shaped.

A vast, dragonish claw scythed through the air. Sonic was already moving. Unsure even as he ran whether he was aiming for the creature or the ship. Unsure even as he ran, even as power lit his spines and lent near-flight to his feet, whether he'd reach either in time.

He had time, amid the flickering milliseconds of speed, to see Knuckles' eyes widen in alarm and close in resignation, and the decision was made without the exact millisecond of choice ever really registering and he barrelled into the echidna, rolling him off his feet as they went to take the brunt of the impact out of it.

The watery claw swept over their head with a sound like colliding icebergs.

"Up up up!" Sonic said, hauling the echidna back to his feet a split second after working out which way _was_ up.

"Robotnik!" The echidna spun in that direction staggering but it was too late, all he was in time to see was the flicker as the ring snapped out. Knuckles staggered again, though nothing had touched him, and Sonic hauled at him once again, spinning him round to face the creature.

"More immediate problem. Right here."

At the moment the thing was preoccupied with Tails who was flitting about what Sonic supposed passed for its head but that couldn't last.

"It's got the chaos emeralds."

Knuckles' voice was shaky and Sonic glanced sideways at him unable to tell if it was injury, shock or fear. He pressed on anyway.

"Yeah. So…? What's that about? You said your Tikal person locked it up with those things – now it's what? Eating them? How's that work?"

Knuckles finally looked at him with a less dazed expression.

"Power is just power hedgehog. Without intent there is no control. Only harm. Only danger."

The creature howled like a rending glacier and Tails narrowly dodged a blow and came ploughing in for a landing just beyond them.

"I hope you two have been coming up with a plan down here because I'm about done," he panted.

Sonic glanced at Knuckles. "So, Mr Expert? Have we?"

Knuckles glared at him. "There's no plan, hedgehog. Just… get those chaos emeralds back."

The creature had finally realised that Tails had eluded its flailing and turned its attention back to the ground. Sonic stared up at it.

"Okay. Emeralds. I see six. Race you for them?"

Knuckles didn't rise to this.

"There are seven," he said instead.

"Robotnik still has one powering the ship," Tails concluded.

"Probably but..." knuckles shook his head as thought chasing off some unwanted thought, fighting for concentration in the here and now.

"What's wrong?" Sonic asked.

Knuckles looked at him and Sonic couldn't tell if it was a glare or entreaty.

"Nothing I can do anything about yet."

Knuckles swung back to face the creature and stumbled, going all the way to his knees. Sonic let out an exasperated yelp, and dived between him and the creature, dashing enough spray from the incoming blow that it crashed over them with no more than bruise-making force.

"Okay. Enough. Something's wrong and you can either tell me what it is or we can high-tail out of here until you're ready to explain!"

Sonic dashed clear once again from the next blow, probably leaving bruises of his own on the echidna's wrist.

"I can't fight this thing with one of my supposed allies lying to me about why he's in a heap on the dirt!"

Knuckles raised his eyes, but not to meet Sonic's – he looked past him, over his shoulder.

Sonic turned to follow his gaze, squinted against the flash of gold of the opening ring to see Robotnik's craft return. A giant green gemstone was clutched in an arm-like appendage at the front. It gleamed even brighter than the sunlight could account more, glittered with dancing energy that shifted like mist over its surface.

"That's what's wrong," Knuckles said. But in spite of the dull despair in his tone he was back on his feet. Not a scrap of his attention remained on the creature he'd seemed so horrified by at every encounter. It was all on Robotnik.

And for the moment so was the creature's.

Robotnik leaned out of the opening canopy and waved something which glittered red between his fingers before he launched it in a glittering arc towards the creature.

"Enjoy!" he called out "I'm afraid I have pressing research elsewhere investigating this magnificent new power source I just happened to find abandoned, so won't be staying to watch the inevitably messy and unpleasant end."

Sonic opened his mouth to dismiss this obvious taunt and warn Knuckles that's all it was, but the echidna had already flung himself towards Robotnik, and the man had clearly underestimated the echidna's remaining strength because he was flying far too low to prevent him from driving his claws into the craft and dragging himself up the side. Sparks flew with every tear he gouged into the machine.

Sonic took half a step in that direction to help, before Tails' panicky, "Sonic!" brought his focus back to the chaos creature which was growing by the second as the power of the last emerald spilled through it.

"Woah!" Sonic caught his breath and stumbled backwards as water rose with the pull of a lethally fast river around his knees. It was still rising and that was impossible surely with nothing to contain it.

It reached his waist, icy cold and there wasn't any more time to work out was was and wasn't possible.


End file.
